


Sing Vote

by 35grams (caxxe), Misaya



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Career dad Erwin, Insecurity, M/M, Pining, Politics, Pre-k teacher Levi, Slow Burn, Toddler Armin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-13
Updated: 2017-09-20
Packaged: 2018-05-01 11:38:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 24
Words: 46,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5204414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/caxxe/pseuds/35grams, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Misaya/pseuds/Misaya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The children would be coming in from recess soon, and Levi was no closer to understanding the meaning behind the message other than that Erwin had wanted to say thank you. How odd it was, he thought to himself, that people needed so many words to express appreciation.</p><p>Levi - Misaya<br/>Erwin - 35grams</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The words danced in squiggly lines across the page, and Levi frowned, staring at the 12 point Times New Roman as his eyes ran over the lines once, twice, a third time. The children were napping, curled up on mats in neat little rows on the floor, and the classroom was silent save for little snuffling snores and the loose syllables of Eren mumbling in his sleep, something about cookies and a unicorn this time. The milky sunlight of early afternoon filtered in through the windows and painted Levi’s study book with shafts of gold. Gold, gold, gold, oh! That was a word that Levi recognized in the passage, and he grinned, circling it triumphantly with a firm hand that left a slight indent from where he’d pressed down on the page.

Gold. That was one word, but the feeling of victory faded quickly, the smile leaching off his face like the last vestiges of summer as the world rotated into autumn. The passage had so many more words, and try as he might, Levi couldn’t seem to make sense of it. One sentence was tricky, two sentences a struggle, three sentences dissolved into meaningless nonsense. He worried at his lower lip, eyebrows furrowed as he contemplated getting the dictionary. No, he decided, that would be even worse, even thinking about all those words and all those small blocks of text sent a headache budding in the forefront of his mind already.

Frustrated, Levi closed his practice book with a firm whap that had one of the children gasping up to the surface of wakefulness with a little frown followed by a teary sob. Setting the book down on a table, Levi hurried over to comfort him, and, one by one, the children woke up in various states of happiness, rubbing chubby hands across their faces and toddling across the classroom to pull out the only recently arranged toys and boxes of crayons from their neatly ordered cubbies.

The rest of the afternoon whirled by, finger painting and sock puppets and Story Time, and Levi was inordinately proud of himself for not stumbling over the words in the brightly painted cardboard pages of Little Red Riding Hood. Maybe that was the problem, he thought to himself as the first parents started to arrive to collect their children, all high heels and business suits and briefcases. He just needed a clearer mental picture of the passage’s main points.

 

* * *

 

Erwin took notes as the last student presented their verbal case analysis. She was the jittery sort, so he made sure to smile reassuringly should her eyes pass his way. For whatever reason, the blushing and shaking persisted. It may have even worsened.

“Now,” Erwin said as he stood to address the law students, “I think we can all agree that that was the most thorough statistical analysis of off-regulation seasonal transpacific flight patterns we’ve ever witnessed.” The students made varying sounds of awe and disbelief. Erwin eyed an inattentive one slouching in the back.

“Bossard.”

The student straightened sharply, even folded his hands on the desk in front of him.

“Mister Bossard, please explain Durberry v. People.”

“Guy was convicted of forgery.”

“Guy?”

“Pros-uh-defendant. Defendant, sir.”

“What was the People’s argument?”

“State found evidence in storage shed after neighbor testimony. Open and shut.”

“Defendant’s?”

“He…he uh…he was…I mean-”

Mister Bossard, you may look as dreadfully bored as you wish,” Erwin said, “provided you actually do some light reading before class.” Erwin checked his watch as the room broke into snickering from those who’d come prepared, and nervous laughter from those who looked as if they’d prefer an asteroid descending over their heads to meeting the professor’s eye.

But they were spared. Erwin closed the class and announced the case studies to be memorized by tomorrow.

“So, professor…” a student started, and at the way the fifty-strong room slowed in their packing nearly in unison, Erwin had an idea of where this was heading.

“Been seeing Mister Zackarius around…I wonder why…” he said, and Erwin slowed, too, in his packing to cross his arms and give the daring student the full force of his apparently no longer convincingly innocent face.

“Only one reason he’s ever back here, you know,” said another conspiratorially to no one in particular, but loud enough to be heard. Fifty-something pairs of eyes watched Erwin as he just barely controlled the tug at his mouth. He should have known not to underestimate third years.

Erwin checked his watch and dismissed them again. He chose not to humor the instigating student’s teasing wink as he went on his way. A number of students stayed behind for advice on this or that, and Erwin accommodated them, always accommodated, even as his watch burned on his wrist and the seconds seemed to tick all the faster.

He hurried to his office to pick up his coat and a few folders of ungraded essays. He passed one hand through his unsettled hair as he fumbled with his keys only to find the door already unlocked. He opened it. His chest tightened.

“Mister Zackley,” he started, “if we could-”

“Now, not another word,” the man said. He’d made himself at home in an armchair across from a desk that might not have seen daylight in years from the paperwork perpetually strewn across it. “I can’t keep the sharks in administration waiting for much longer. Are we or are we not renewing your contract?”

“Sir, the deadline is next week-”

“Moved up.”

Erwin came into the room and leaned against his desk. “You’re kidding.”

“We’re not some third-rate institution, Erwin. Do you know how many upstarts are nipping at your ankles for your position? Or should I tell you how many applicants we’ve gotten from Harvard alone-”

“Alright. Tomorrow.”

“Today.”

Erwin watched him, but it seemed that he had reached the end of the university president’s generous slack. As he unwound his tangled thoughts, Zackley rose, clapped him on the shoulder and said, “You’ll do just fine.”

“Sir?”

“Doesn’t take a detective, Smith. I’ve seen Zackarius floating around. And I know you’ve been shaking hands with everyone from corner store janitors to state senators. Hell, I’ve been seeing your mug on local news for weeks. Run. Run for the seat.”

Erwin couldn’t believe it. He was sure he was imagining the entire exchange. He’d expected Zackley to figure it out, but never this, never an actual endorsement. He would need to have a talk with Mike. He was beginning to realize that their agreement to mention Erwin’s House aspirations to no one was less than useless if former law professor and campaign manager Mike “Never lost a single race” Zackarius could stoke fires with his presence alone.

Erwin applied for a sabbatical. Zackley approved it on the spot, shook his hand and echoed his goodwill. Flushed from the immediacy of it all, it took Erwin a moment too long to understand why his heart began to race when he turned to find the sky darkened, nearly black.

He grabbed his things and flew to his car. He was on the other side of the lot. The battered old thing was in sight. His phone rang.

Erwin had half a mind to ignore it, but his hands moved and Mike gave him two, maybe three second’s notice before he put him on the line with a city commissioner they had been trying to set a phone appointment with for two months. Erwin paced the length of the darkened lot as they spoke, and by the time goodbyes were exchanged, his hair pointed in every imaginable angle and his tie was a bent and curled and rumpled mess.

It was not a relaxing drive. Erwin glanced at the baby blue car seat through the rear-view mirror and tightened his hands on the wheel as he crafted yet another excuse, as he prepared to hear the boy tell him again that it’s okay (It isn’t.) or that it doesn’t matter (It matters.).

He navigated the dim lighting in the Pre-K after a night guard confirmed his ID. Only the main corridors were lit. He didn’t look at the time, couldn’t bear to, and only squeezed the generous tip in his pocket he’d prepared for whomever he’d forced to stay so late with his son.

Erwin ran a final hand through his hair before following the sound of soft snoring to the school’s reading room. As his eyes adjusted to the dimmed lamplight, he found Armin curled in a soft armchair. Dozing in a chair beside him was an instructor he’d only glimpsed once or twice, content as the man was to let the other teachers schmooze with the parents. Armin didn’t stir at the click of his echoing steps, but the man was a far lighter sleeper. His eyes opened at the sound and narrowed immediately. He looked as if he would like nothing more than to, rightly, tear him a new one.

“I’m so sorry,” Erwin said.


	2. Chapter 2

“I’m so sorry,” Armin’s father said, breaking Levi out of the light slumber he’d fallen into. Levi sighed as he unfolded himself from the small chair he’d curled up into – there was a crick in his neck that he’d have to work out later. Armin was still sleeping in the armchair he’d all but bullied Levi out of – clearly the child was destined for some career heavily entrenched in coercing people into giving up their possessions. Perhaps a bigshot in the IRS. Levi could just see it now, Armin in a three-piece suit, maybe pushing up black-framed glasses up on the bridge of his nose, rifling through an errant taxpayer’s documents and informing them over the phone that they were currently thousands of dollars in debt.

It was a vision that coincided quite frighteningly with how Armin’s father looked at the present, blonde hair ruffled and gleaming in the low glow of the school’s night lamps, the knot of his Windsor tie resting in the hollow of his throat. It wasn’t the first time he’d been late to pick up his son, and Levi had learned to pack extra snacks and juice boxes for the boy just in case it was one of those late nights again.

He sniffed huffily. If Levi had been any other person, he’d probably have packed it up hours ago, sent Armin off to the principal’s office and let the matronly secretaries there fuss over him and coddle him to within an inch of his life. But Levi knew what it was like, to be handed over from one person to another, to be left waiting while his friends disappeared into cars and parents’ waiting arms, vanishing one by one.

“You’re late,” he said, waspishly, only pointing out the obvious. “Again. I tried calling your mobile, but I suppose you _are_ a rather busy man, Mr. Smith.” His stomach suddenly growled, vigorous, his adult body burning through the animal crackers and apple juice that had seemed to tide Armin over.

He made to pack up, slotting his test prep materials and pencils back into his messenger bag, trying to keep his attention on the task at hand while Armin whimpered his way out of sleep behind him as his father roused him from his dreams.

 

* * *

 

Erwin let little hands clutch at his jacket lapels as his phone burned a hole in his pocket. He chose that moment to remember the call he’d automatically declined during the phoned meeting. Softly, he shushed Armin’s sleepy warblings, sounds that could have been mistaken for the chirps of a flustered wren.

His gut twisted at the pointed comment. It was not the first he’d heard it, and it wouldn’t be the last. It twisted all the more at the muffled roar that betrayed the man’s supper-less evening. Erwin turned to apologize again, but the instructor had his back to him, tucking dark hair out of his eyes as he packed a notebook and various books with GED plastered boldly across them. He caught something else.

Barron’s. At least six editions too old. A used copy, he guessed from its bent spine and curling pages. The test had been overhauled at least twice since this edition, and Barron’s was trash – expensive trash – compared to the much more thorough Manhattan Prep series. Every one of his years as an undergraduate adviser demanded he at once take this imposter from his hands and recommend a thousand better books.

But he thought of something better. He let the bills drift back into his pocket. He had no idea if the man would accept them anyway, and now it seemed such a cold and clinical thing to compensate a person who sacrificed his own hours to keep his son company. No, Erwin doubted he would accept it, not now. He read it in the set of his jaw, in the tightness of his tired eyes. Erwin left with another apology and a good night, and hoped the echo of the twisting gurgle from his own gut didn’t carry as far as it seemed.

Armin fidgeted in his arms the next morning as Erwin made a quick stop by the bookstore before making the drive to the school. He tucked the latest edition of the Manhattan Prep course book and several supplementary guides into the boy’s bag and instructed him to take the books to the man as soon as he said hello to his friends and teachers. Miss Ral encouraged him to give Armin a reminder here or there. She said she’d never seen a shier boy.

But not in the car. From his periphery, Erwin watched him unzip his bag one tooth at a time and slip out the note Erwin had written and tucked inside the guide’s pages. His movements were startlingly minimal, his expression playing at indifference and yet tightly controlled. Erwin knew that expression. He turned around at a red light. The little spy froze, ears reddening at having been caught.

“Go on, then, what does it say?” Erwin asked, because Miss Ral had also never seen a more talented boy.

“Thank you for staying with my son,” he chirped as the light changed. “I noticed yours is an old edition. I since-sincerely hope this is not improper, but I needed to show how deeply I appreciate what you’ve done. E. Smith.” He frowned.

“No good?” Erwin asked.

Armin rubbed his eyes. “You should add another thank you.”

Erwin smiled. “Will you add one for me?”

“Too bumpy!”

“How about when you get there?”

Armin scratched his chin. His little brows drew together in concentration. It was a serious responsibility. Finally, he nodded. “Okay.”


	3. Chapter 3

“These are for you,” Armin informed Levi quite seriously at the soonest opportunity, recess, when the other children had already scampered outside into the weak sunlight. Levi’s eyes widened as the little boy pushed a thick stack of books onto his desk – Manhattan Prep, the latest edition, it looked like, along with several guidebooks.

“Daddy left a note for you, too!” Armin chirped, before he too scampered out into the sunlight to join his friends under the watchful eye of the teacher’s aides and playground monitors. The note that Erwin had written was penned in neat, elegant script on a creamy ivory card that felt thick and expensive between Levi’s fingers, and he squinted to read the words, forcing every ounce of focus he had on the curves and swoops of the letters, as though sheer willpower could make the sentences divulge their meanings.

Thank you, the note began. Thank you. Levi knew those words, inside and out, they were simple enough and he’d said them many times over the course of his life. The rest of the note was not as easy, and Levi read and reread the words, over and over and over, eyes flitting from one edge of the paper to the other. The children would be coming in from recess soon, and Levi was no closer to understanding the meaning behind the message other than that Erwin had wanted to say thank you. How odd it was, he thought to himself, that people needed so many words to express appreciation. He tucked the creamy paper back underneath the cover of the preparatory booklet as the first children began to trickle back in through the classroom, cheeks ruddy and rosy from their time in the air.

The rest of the morning and afternoon passed uneventfully. The only hitch had happened sometime during Story Time, the children gathered around him in a raggedy semicircle while he held up Little Red Riding Hood and turned the cardboard pages every once in a while to show off the changing pictures.

“That’s not what that page says!” Armin piped up right as Levi was getting to the part where Red was telling her grandmother what big teeth she had. “It says ‘Oh, my, grandma! What large teeth you have!’”

Levi stared blankly at the boy, whose bright blue gaze flitted from the page to him and back again.

“I said that,” he said, slowly, uncomprehending. The other children were looking on expectantly, eager to hear the rest of the story even though Levi had told it what felt like hundreds of times before.

“You said, ‘Grandma, how big your tuba is,’” Armin parroted at him, in an impersonation of Levi that even Levi found almost frighteningly accurate. “But that’s not what the page says.”

“Oh, my gosh, Armin!” Eren exclaimed, leaning over to prod him. “Just let Mr. Levi tell the story already! I don’t like the part with the tuba.”

Armin fell silent, and after a brief moment, Levi shook himself out of his worry and continued on with the story.

Armin’s father was on time today, and as he helped Armin tug on his jacket and slip his backpack over his shoulders, Levi’s mind was frantically trying to scramble up Armin’s father’s name. It started with an E, he knew that much, that was how the letter had been signed. But what was it? Edward? Elliot? Elephant? Something seemed a bit off about that last one, but he figured it might have been as good a shot as any. The man didn’t look particularly like an Edward or an Elliot.

He walked Armin over to his father, reciting his short little blurb over and over. Thank you for the preparatory booklets, that is very kind. Ten words. Surely he could do that.

 

* * *

 

Mike paced the length of his home office. Truthfully, it was less a home office than a home corner-of-the-living-room, but it did its job. There was no other furniture but a pair of beds and a small sofa bracketed by boxes piled high. One’s label read Erwin, the other Armin, still another Kitchen and Bath. The one labeled Office was the only one emptied and cast off to the side. Mike hummed as Erwin set out coffee. The cup-clinks echoed into the tomb-like flat. He thumbed at a dwindling stack of stationary at the corner of the old desk.

“Still have these?” Mike said. He held the thick blank cards lengthwise between index and thumb, then shuffled them like playing cards.

“Zackley spares no expense,” Erwin said.

“When’d he give these out in those goody bags, was it graduation? How many years…are you a hoarder, Mister Smith?” Mike touched his chest in mock-shock.

Erwin recalled the man’s own flat, the contents of which put every kitschy knick-knack shop this side of the city to shame. “Glass houses, Mister Zacharius.”

Mike set the cards down and blew on his coffee. “Good. You’ll see more than a little rock-throwing at the debate.”

Erwin frowned. He returned to his desk and checked for any missing signatures in the campaign paperwork. “We’ve talked about this. No pettiness, no mud-slinging. The issues come first-”

“See, that’s why you’re the stuffy law professor, and I’m the hot-shot manager.”

“Your modesty is overwhelming.”

Mike laughed through his nose. He cast an eye about the new apartment, and Erwin knew it was coming. It was in the cant of his head, the tension in his jaw.

“Erwin,” he started, “a few responsible, well-chosen donors-”

“Will have nothing to do with my campaign.”

“But to sell your house-”

“-is a small thing compared to the alternative.”

Mike clicked his tongue. “I’m not sure anymore that you’re up against Malone. More like a battle to the death between your idealism and your silver tongue.”

His pen stilled. “I wouldn’t call it idealism,” Erwin said. Opportunist, he’d been called. Snake was a popular one.

“But you accept silver tongue?”

“I can neither confirm nor deny.”

“Your modesty is overwhelming.”

Erwin smiled wryly and they finished the paperwork. Mike’s phone chimed. He checked the text.

“Just in time. Let’s get these to the agency and head to-”

“Not yet, it’s seven.” He rose to get his coat.

“Seven… ah, Armin.” Mike’s brows drew together. He scratched his chin. Carefully, he started, “You know, there’s a place on Lexington that runs later-”

“No.”

“Erwin-”

Erwin’s grip tightened on his coat as he pulled it on. He rubbed his numbed nose and ears – the heaters were as effective as a candle. Winter couldn’t thaw quickly enough.

“Let him have this,” Erwin said. “Just a last few good months with his friends. After that, there’s no telling what he’ll be forced to put up with, whether or not I take the seat.”

“You’ll take it,” Mike said, and meant it. Erwin locked the door behind them. He was afraid of the very same.

Security wouldn’t let Mike inside no matter how convincingly Erwin vouched for him, so he suppressed a smile at the sight of the enormous man crouching into one of the brightly colored plastic chairs he was sure were left in the lobby for the receptionist’s amusement, and stepped into Armin’s classroom.

He looked over the heads of the children waiting and milling about and running to their parents, a vortex of primary colors and little hands swirling at his feet. Finally, he found him.

Erwin’s eyes then rose to the man who led him forward, and the events of the other day poured back in a heady rush. Armin raced to slip into the sleeves of his jacket as Erwin held it for him and studied the instructor whom he’d callously inconvenienced that night. He read no expression on him, but it seemed from his empty arms that he didn’t intend to return Erwin’s peace offering. The tension began to slip out of him. The last thing he wanted was to make an enemy out of one of his son’s teachers.

He wondered if it was all the preparation for the campaign that colored everything like a warzone and everyone in it like a combatant. Mike did prepare him, did say that legislating was one beast and campaigning was entirely another. He wasn’t putting himself, putting Armin, through this endeavor only for it to reduce him into a creature whose ambitions were reduced to a paltry black and white.

Erwin rose and smiled at him, at Levi, the large name-tag said, and opened his mouth to speak as Levi did the same. Erwin shut his mouth, but so did he. Then, infuriatingly, fate demanded they begin to speak at the same time yet again.

Armin giggled as Erwin smiled apologetically and said, “Please, you first.”


	4. Chapter 4

“Thank you for the palpated bookies,” Levi blurted out when it became apparent that Erwin had ceded the flow of the conversation to him. A puzzled look fluttered over Erwin’s face. Hm. Perhaps he’d mixed up his words again, several people, Petra and his mother included, had told him he had a tendency to do that when he was flustered, although he suspected they tried not to point it out nearly as much as it happened. He would try again.

“Thank you” – yes, yes, this part was good, he’d had occasion to say it many times over his life so he felt secure in repeating it yet again – “for the” – so far, so good, now here was the hard part – “participating bumblebees.” Armin looked at him oddly. Levi bit his cheek so hard he almost tasted blood. God damn it, he thought, he was thoroughly incapable of doing anything right, had been ever since that bicycling accident a few years ago. Some days were better than others, certainly, and stress seemed to exacerbate the problem, but it didn’t change the fact that there wasn’t something quite right about it.

And, despite the fact that his insurance had paid for a hefty sum of the damages – his visit to the emergency room, the following check-ups where the doctors had examined his injuries critically and told him he’d be fine, save for a few scars – it hadn’t been nearly enough for all the reparations, and Levi didn’t think he nor his mother could begin to even think about further scans and tests. There simply wasn’t the money for it, and Levi simply didn’t have the time. Both were undeniably precious, and unbelieving though he was, Levi found himself hoping, begging, praying for a miracle.

He hadn’t been cycling since. Bits and pieces flashed through his memory every now and again, fleeting and dripping away almost as quickly as they’d come like water fluttering through the crevices of his cupped hands. The hot smell of the asphalt, baking under the summer heat. The weight of his black Jansport backpack on his shoulders, loaded down with textbooks and notepads. A flash of bright blue metal that blurred careening around the corner.

And then what? No matter how hard he tried, Levi found that he couldn’t remember anything past that point. He had woken up to his mother’s anxious face, the sterile lights of a hospital room, and a slow beep beep beep indicating that, for all intents and purposes, Levi was still alive. He had been numbed up on morphine or some such derivative, and the world had been loopy, fuzzy, his lips too heavy to form the words that he so desperately wanted to ask.

They were heavy now, too, but he tried again. “Thank you for the preparatory booklets.” Yes, those were the right words, Levi could tell by the way the man’s face broke into a relieved smile, albeit a puzzled one. Armin grinned up at him, little blue eyes crinkled into curved commas, so much the spitting image of his father, and Levi couldn’t help but wonder where Armin’s mother was. Where was the Mrs. Smith? he wanted to ask, but knew it would be far too presumptuous. Erwin – ah! That was his name! Levi distinctly remembered reading it on a sign-out sheet at some point or another – certainly looked every part the busy man, and what with the number of times Levi had stayed late at the school with Armin, the image fit the reality. Busy, busy, busy, and yet he’d had the time to go out and buy those nice new preparatory booklets for him as a gesture of thanks. Preparatory booklets. Levi tested the words on his tongue, mouthing them to himself in his determination to commit them to memory. He hoped the sheer muscle repetition would be enough.

 

* * *

 

Erwin denounced and rejected his own atrocious sleeping patterns the moment Levi opened his mouth. He was sure he had misheard. Then it happened again. Erwin watched Armin from the corner of his eye, sure now that this was some inside joke for his benefit, but Armin’s brows, too, met in confusion.

“Thank you…” Levi started again, and by the deep flush in his face, Erwin was willing to guess that his first attempts were not deliberately bizarre. Ms. Ral looked their way and stiffened as if she meant to excuse herself and come their way.

“…for the preparatory booklets,” he finished. Erwin smiled.

“Not at all. It’s a difficult enough test even with the most up-to-date material,” he said. Ms. Ral smiled and turned back to the parent she was speaking with.

“Used to be that you could find it in any library. Everyone could prepare on even terms, but now-” Erwin went on, his blood simmering into an anticipatory boil. One doesn’t advise high school students, then undergrads, then graduate and law students for as long as he had without uncovering every last crooked corner of each education system. Multiplying gatekeepers to higher learning. Blatant favoritism for the wealthy and well-connected. School-to-prison pipeline. Deregulation. Privatization.

It was no secret that an uneducated people was a blind people was an easily fooled people. His platform had many faces, many positions, but his pillar was truth.

“It’s so different, now. I’ve had students who-” His phone chimed. It was Mike.

**Office closes in 20 min!!**

“I’m sorry,” Erwin said as Levi glanced from him to the phone, “I won’t keep you. There’s a CD in the guidebook with practice tests and sign up credentials for an online-”

“Erwin!”

Mike’s voice boomed, at once explosive and sing-song, through the school.

“Mike!” Armin called in answer and tugged on Erwin’s arm. Powerless against the force of his enthusiasm, Erwin waved goodbye as Armin shepherded him out of the school. Mike whirled Armin about and sat him on his shoulders.

They submitted the campaign paperwork and discussed timeline strategy and FEC registration with an agency rep as Armin waited dutifully in the waiting room with his legs crossed beneath him and a book balanced between his knobby knees. When Erwin returned with Mike, they found him giving an engrossing lecture to a thirty-strong audience about the perils of wearing a brightly colored hood while walking alone in the woods at night.

The three ate at Armin’s favorite corner diner. Out of earshot, Erwin asked their waitress if they wouldn’t mind changing the channel on their overhead displays when the name of a familiar nonprofit drew his ear. Though his face appeared more and more often on local news for his work in NGOs and nonprofits, he wanted to avoid subjecting those images to Armin for as long as he was able. It was naive, he knew, this pretense at normalcy. Surely, his playmates or teachers would one day recognize him and ask Armin questions he shouldn’t be asked, but surely, Erwin had a little more time.

They asked Armin about his day, but strangely, the boy gave one word answers, if any at all, where he would usually need to be reminded more than once mid-sermon to take a bite. Mike gave him a knowing look. He texted him as the waitress complimented Armin’s puppy-eared hat:

**Smart kid. Might be time to have that talk.**

Erwin shot him an unamused look. Before he paid, he sent back:

**Not yet.**

Armin waved goodbye to Mike and stepped into the frigid apartment. He shook off his book-bag and his coat. At his shiver, Erwin knelt to rub his chilled hands.

“Sure everything’s okay at school?” Erwin asked.

“Mh-hm.”

“Armin.”

Armin looked away.

“Is someone bothering you?”

It wouldn’t be the first time nor the last that a certain child’s parents found that the school could no longer process their payments for some strange reason.

Armin shook his head. His hair stuck to his eyebrows. Erwin shut off his ringing phone and brushed it away from his face. It was time for a haircut.

“Are you sure?”

Armin only pouted and looked stubbornly away, so he didn’t see Erwin’s hands sneaking to his sides. He shrieked with laughter and pummeled Erwin with his small fists as he tickled the answer out of him.

“I’ll stop if you tell me,” Erwin teased.

“Okay, okay!” Armin gasped. Erwin drew away as Armin caught his breath.

Armin sniffed. “I think something’s wrong.”  
“Wrong, how?”

“With my eyes.”

Erwin’s heart rate picked up. He looked into them severely. No discoloration. No puffiness. The same familiar blue.

“Why do you think that? Do they hurt?” Erwin asked. Armin shook his head, stood, and dragged his feet to his bag. He slipped out a crinkled page.

“I traced from Mr. Levi’s book…”

Erwin smoothed out the page.

Oh, my, grandma! What large teeth you have!

Armin pointed. “Does…does that say teeth?”

“Yes,” Erwin said, and before he could ask why, Armin pointed elsewhere.

“Does that say large?”

“Yes,” Erwin said, to Armin’s apparent relief.

“Okay!”

Armin took the page from his hands and ran to the bathroom to wash up as if he’d never had a concern at all. Erwin looked after him as his step-stool scraped against the cold tiles. He was no stranger to Armin’s odd requests, and it wasn’t a great feat to accept them as they were, as these little forges into understanding. It was exhilarating to watch. The feeling was not unlike what he’d felt watching his teacher just a few hours ago.

Erwin didn’t have the time for something as decadent as reflection, but it bullied into the forefront of his mind anyway. Levi’s eyes had crinkled in concentration. When the words had finally obeyed him, the elegant lines melted into his skin and he looked up proudly, neck craned, as if that seemingly simple thing was a victory not Erwin, not anyone, could take from him.

“Papa! Where’s my toothbrush?”

“Right here,” Erwin called. He stood too-quickly and graced the room with a pair of pops from his frozen joints. He carried the box marked Bathroom into its appropriate room as Armin giggled at the sound.


	5. Chapter 5

After that utterly embarrassing ordeal with Erwin, Levi smiled with relief and waved the pair of them off, watching the sunlight streak through their hair and kiss the strands with gold. Armin clung to his father’s hand and tugs him through the school’s parking lot, and Levi felt his smile start to dissolve as he thought back to Story Time, at the way Armin had squinted at the pages of the storybook that Levi had thought he’d known so well.

Had he really read it wrong?  Levi fretted over the thought as he headed back into the classroom to pack up his messenger bag. His hand brushed against the glossy new cover of Manhattan Preparatory booklet he had already planned to carry around with an almost religious fervency. He had opened it last night, admiring the sheen of the front cover and the neatly ordered lines of text, the bolded titles on the soothingly beige paper separating them into clear, distinct sections.

He had allowed himself to hope, for a moment, for a breath that seemed to last a lifetime.

He had focused on the first block of text, hoping, praying that maybe this time it would be better, and had gotten through the first three sentences without a problem before the meaning had started to swim away from him, strokes against the current like so many tiny fishes. But he would try again tonight, try, try again! He’d even ask his mother if she would help him, busy as she was; he would risk the vague look of sympathy and pity that would flit across her face for the chance to know what the words said, what the words meant.

Levi caught the bus home a few moments later, satisfied that all the remaining children were quickly dispersing into their parents’ waiting arms and waiting cars. Uncoiling the curl of his black earphones, Levi slotted the buds into his ears and closed his eyes, letting the soft twangs of guitar and the gentle chords of piano carry him away from the words and letters that tormented him with their sounds.

+

The apartment was dark when he pushed his key into the front lock and slotted it open. Kuchel’s shoes weren’t by the door when he looked at the tiled floor of the entranceway, and he figured that perhaps she was still at work at the library, shelving errant books and helping patrons find titles that they needed or wanted to read. Levi was jealous. He had loved reading, too, before, and the fact that he was missing out on so much more, on so many more universes behind glossy hardcovers with painted pictures, pained him more than he could express in words. He couldn’t keep the stories straight in his mind anymore, missing out on complex sentences, and even picking up a book exhausted him with the thought of how much work it would take him to even start to immerse himself in the author’s words in the same way he had before.

Why not? he used to ask himself angrily, glaring at his reflection in the fluorescent light of the bathroom mirror. He looked perfectly normal, if one could discount the white scars that zigzagged across his skin like the touch of frost. So much had been taken from him, and the pressure of school and rigid learning had broken into his mind and covered it with cobwebs, and he had creaked along day to day to day, another cog in the machine, until one day he had informed his mother that he couldn’t handle it anymore.

She had been disappointed, but it had faded over time, a dissolution of emotion that was nearly a decade in the making, still burning in the corners of her eyes whenever he caught her looking at him.

He was going to be twenty-five soon. Twenty-five, an adult in all but mind, without a concrete idea of what he wanted to do, without a concrete idea of the man he wanted to be when he grew up.

He sighed, placing his messenger bag neatly on the sofa with a soft squeaking of the cushions. He would try again. The exam date loomed up in front of him, summer break, a mere nine months away, and Levi had no idea how he was going to recover quickly enough or learn quickly enough to even sit for the test.

Summer, he thought to himself as he headed toward the kitchen to put a pot of water for pasta on to boil. It seemed a lifetime away, but nine months would pass in the blink of an eye. Time was like quicksand, ticking down in the hourglass, but there was nothing else for it. Gravity would have its wicked way, but, with a glance toward the silhouette of his messenger bag on the couch, Erwin had handed him a lifeline, something to cling to.

Yes, he thought bravely as he placed sticks of spaghetti into the water. He would try.

 

* * *

 

Armin made odd little burblings in his sleep. Erwin smiled as he unpacked the remaining boxes. It seemed there had never been enough room for anything in that grand, two-story house. Now, he needed to remind himself several times over after peering over the small yet still barren flat that they hadn’t lost a box or two or five in the move.

He fell into the couch after disposing of the boxes. It was that timeless void of not-quite-morning, not-quite-night when the world was still but for the occasional fevered honking match on the streets. He reached for his phone and thumbed through his photos. The usual ironclad control that stopped him from doing this had been whittled away. Too much time had passed. Surely, he would feel nothing.

She smiled in the early ones. He would have forgotten what they looked like if it weren’t for the images. They lit up her face. They shrank as her belly grew.

Mike booked half again as many venues as he intended Erwin to speak at. He only huffed knowingly when Erwin declared he would visit every last one. Erwin cleared his neighbor with the school to pick up Armin when he couldn’t. It was meant to be a last resort, but as his speaking tour picked up, he couldn’t say whether he or Hange saw more of his son.

Many of the venues were schools and universities. He met hundreds of students. It was strange, then, that only one face came to mind as he spoke of tenacity and accessibility and higher learning in one lecture hall after another.

He’d gone through a number of schools for Armin before finding the one. Though he could afford private schooling, he’d looked not for the quality of their uniforms or the sheen of their books but the enthusiasm of their instructors. Too often behind their too-large smiles and impeccable manners were wooden scripts and a rigidity that didn’t belong outside the columns that bracketed their polished entrances.

By all counts, he should have passed right by Armin’s school. The rooms were as small as the class sizes were large. There were too few chairs and too many flickering overhead lights. But he had been intrigued by the breadth of their curriculum and the blossoming kaleidoscope of projects pasted on every inch of wall, and so agreed to sit in on a lesson or two. The first had been Ms. Ral’s. He was convinced within minutes. No student was ignored. Every question was answered. Lessons were flexible, fluid. He’d never heard so much laughter.

As he signed the papers in the next room, another instructor took her place. At a glance, he was her opposite. His words were spare, and his manner severe, too much, Erwin had thought, for toddlers. But the children adored him. If he wanted them quiet as a mouse, they were quieter. If he wanted them, even the shiest of them, to speak up, they would sing.

He had a magnetism about him that Erwin admired, one he was sure had evolved from countless years of teaching. But he was as spare with adults as he was with the kids, and the hectic mass of parents picking up their kids and making sure their backpacks and snacks and toys were all where they should be was hardly the best time for conversation. Even so, it was his face he saw at the beginning of each speech and at each end, his tattered GED books, his resolve.

Summer was drawing nearer. Trees and gardens broke in their first buds. Erwin’s opponent had launched one too many unsuccessful accusations of elitism and had grown quiet ever since. Mike heard rumblings about Malone restructuring his campaign and even shopping around for a new manager. He warned Erwin that if he had the money to pull in Dawk, they were in for the long fight.

Erwin hadn’t heard the name in years. It would be a hell of a reunion.

Hange couldn’t pick Armin up. They were, as their phD partner put it, unavailable to anyone but their precious bacteria for the next two weeks. Erwin couldn’t hear much more over the sound of something shattering in the background and the partner’s emphatic It’s okay!s so he ended his town hall appearance early and drove to the school. Mercifully, he was only the second to last to arrive this time.


	6. Chapter 6

Erwin was getting better at not being dead last to pick up their child. Today, that particular honor belonged to Eren, whom Levi was agitatedly trying to entertain and placate; his mother had gotten held up at work, and though Levi appreciated her phone call to let him know how much longer she expected to be, it didn’t change the fact that Eren was thoroughly incorrigible. Despite the fact that his black messenger bag had his shiny Manhattan Prep in it and a few sharpened pencils and clean erasers for work, Eren would prevent any study from being done that day.

Levi was almost reluctant to see Erwin’s car pull into the parking lot; he’d take Armin with him, Eren would lose a playmate to distract him, and Levi was sure he’d be stuck reading and rereading the same storybooks to the child, over and over again.

Summer was coming all too soon, and the enormity of it all flooded Levi in waves that alternated with swells of regret and valleys of despair. Some days were better than others, days where the words managed to make sense and danced images throughout his head, full of meaning, and some days were much, much worse, where the sentences gathered like storms, violent syllables whipping around too fast to understand. Levi had been stuck in a trough of these bad days for the past week and a half, and Kuchel’s side glances of pity weren’t exactly helping him any.

He shoved thoughts of the upcoming examination from his mind as he watched Erwin half-stride, half-jog over the parking lot towards the classroom. Armin squealed with delight, shoving his lunch box and pencil bag into his backpack in eager anticipation of going home. It was a Friday afternoon, and the trees were budding, sprouting with new growth, some even going so far as to have the audacity to bloom in tiny glossy petals that were silky between Levi’s thumb and forefinger.

The world was turning, ever so slowly, spinning away rapid beneath Levi’s feet as it charted its course into the future, and Levi felt more lost than he had ever been before. Unmoving, frozen in time, stationary. Too many words to describe the same feeling of hopelessness he got at the end of the day when he rolled over to click off the lamp on his nightstand, charting off another day.

The books Erwin had given him seemed to be helping much more than the old study guides he’d been using before, the information laid out more clearly and more concisely, instead of in big blocks of text that intimidated Levi whenever he opened the recycled-print pages already curling with words both his and not. Levi knew it couldn’t last, this sort of indebted gratefulness he carried around with him, a selfish sort of wish that that spring would go on forever so that Armin would never move up to the next class, move to the buildings on the other side of the school.

But time had to move forward, and Erwin was coming to pick Armin up and carry him away for the weekend, and Levi had been hearing all day about how Erwin planned to take him to the aquarium, show him the fishies behind the glass, and he had smiled patiently at the boy’s enthusiasm, wishing he could reclaim some of it for himself. His weekend stretched out empty in front of him, study, study, study some more and hope that this time the words and their meanings lodged themselves in his memory, grasping at straws for understanding.

He pasted a smile on his face as Erwin came up to them, holding his arms out to catch Armin up in a gleeful hug.

“Up, up!” Armin said.

Erwin hoisted him up until his stout little fingers brushed the ceiling. Erwin envied him his wonder – the ends of his own hair always caught on the low ceiling stucco if he forgot to bow his head.

He turned to Levi and thanked him for staying with Armin. Though this was the first he’d seen of him in the several weeks since Hange started picking Armin up, he could have sworn the man hadn’t always had that sunken pallor to him.

His smile, too, was engineered. The man didn’t smile anyway, didn’t need to. When his students hugged him goodbye or said something especially silly, the lines on his forehead disappeared. His eyes softened. There was none of that now.

It was none of Erwin’s business. He knew that kind of performative smile well, saw it on the faces of students and faculty and even his own and knew it said don’t linger, knew it said go away.

But when he saw who else had yet to pick up their child, he realized it said something else entirely. He stooped down to speak to Armin as Eren banged about with the wooden toys.

“Hey, Armin,” Erwin said, “What did Eren think about your Iguanodon figure?”

Armin gasped and bounced on his feet. “I forgot to show him,” he whined.

“Go on,” Erwin said, and Armin bounded back and called for Eren to look at his toy. Levi watched the three with an arched brow.

“Ah…” Erwin started lamely, lowering his voice and stooping slightly for Levi to hear as Armin gushed about how this dinosaur was his favorite because it has thumbs, “Armin is very…frank about his friends, so I know Eren can be a handful. We have a few minutes anyway, and Armin barely sees him outside of class…” Erwin watched the two play as he spoke, but he saw, too, from his peripheral how the man studied him, analyzed him, catlike. Erwin wondered how he had ever stared down legions of unruly students and university presidents and the governor himself, yet um’d and ah’d under the eye of his son’s pre-k teacher.

 

* * *

 

Levi watched with no small amount of suspicion as Erwin set down Armin, who bounded off to show Eren some plastic dinosaur figurine he was pulling out of his backpack even as he ran over. The two children squealed in delight over it, moving its brightly colored limbs with wonder, and he relaxed only the slightest bit at the delay Erwin had offered him, clutching at it like straws.

Erwin had given him a lame excuse, a cop out of an answer, and though Levi wasn’t particularly gifted in reading the subtext behind people’s intentions, he felt sure there was something Erwin wanted to tell him, something he was holding back.

He arched an eyebrow at Erwin, pressing his lips tight together in a skeptical line. Surely Erwin had better things to be doing, working on those stacks of paperwork and bright banners that Armin often chattered about, filling Levi’s days with a slipstream of words. Some caught, some snagged on the banks of memory, but Levi let the vast majority of it ride by and carry him away in the current. Armin was clearly excited about his father’s career and his work, and Levi often nodded, smiled noncommittally, and tried his best to encourage the bright babbling enthusiasm of youth, hoping it would infect him with its enthusiasm and vivacity.

What could Erwin possibly want? He wondered to himself. It must have been something big, something important, if the way he was hesitating was any indication. Well, Levi certainly wasn’t one to beat around the bush, and if Erwin was planning to stall, well, that was just too bad.

“Yeah? What is it?” he asked. He tried to fight down a wince; the question had come out far more snippy and pointed than he’d intended. He made a mental note to himself to have Kuchel or Petra help him with inflection, some time.

 

* * *

 

The man’s harsh demand sobered Erwin’s blundering thoughts. He was no novice orator, but this was neither rally nor lecture hall. With Mike, his interactions were reinforced by history. With Hange, circumstance. With all others, by duty or profession. He saw no neat category here, no boxes to check. Ideally, he should have gathered Armin up in his arms and left. That was the script. Those were the rules. Still, he never did bother with teleprompters.

He invited Levi to have a seat, but as there was only one adult-sized chair at Levi’s desk, Erwin could do little else but park himself on a bright red plastic chair beside him. At the very least, the ridiculous display would slacken the note of tension that suddenly thrummed between them, and them alone. The boys had not once glanced their way.

“I was wondering how your studying was going, if the books are any help,” Erwin said in as dignified a tone as he could manifest in his position. “That series can really talk in circles in the Language Arts sections. When I took it, I must have read those aloud three, four times over.”

Eren roared and chased Armin around the playroom.

 

* * *

 

Oh? That was all? Levi wondered to himself as he looked down at Erwin in the little red chair he’d seated himself in. It was, frankly, ridiculous, and Levi bit back a smile that threatened to flutter around the corners of his mouth. From the way Erwin had been acting, Levi had been sure the man had been ready to inform him of some grave crisis, some wrongdoing he’d committed without being aware of it, and he’d been defensive, hackles raising as he prepared a rebuttal, a quick witted retort, for something he hadn’t even heard yet.

And there was the whole undertone of context running through Erwin’s sentences, too. Read it aloud three, four times over. Circles in the Language Arts section. Huh. It was a new development, puzzling, to say the least, but Levi shoved the thoughts to the back of his mind to mull over later.

“The studying is going as well as it can be,” he replied, fiddling with a pencil on his desk and watching Eren and Armin out of the corner of his eye. The two boys were running around the room, bright sparks of youthful energy. It was a lie, he knew, but Erwin didn’t have to know that, and Levi would much rather keep his weaknesses to himself. “Like I’ve said, the books are very healthy*. I really appreciate them.”

 

* * *

 

Erwin knew the tells of an evasive student as expertly as he knew which story Armin wanted him to read before bed by the cant of his head. Levi wasn’t his student, of course, but the urge to help him do his best dominated all the same. Levi looked away for a moment and Erwin wondered how best to push without actually pushing. Then Levi spoke again, and Erwin’s thoughts left him entirely.

“Healthy,” Erwin echoed, and he couldn’t quite stop his smile. Anticipating the man’s ruffling feathers, he winked and added “Charming way to put it.”

“Papa!”

Armin bounded toward him as Eren leapt at the sight of a familiar car pulling into the school’s parking lot.

“Papa,” he said severely, ”Mr. Levi said he’s never _ever_ seen a lionfish.”

Erwin frowned. “Never?”

“Never. He has to come with us tomorrow. It’s important.”

“Oh, Armin, I’m sure Mr. Levi is very busy…” Erwin started, and though the idea of having a third along on the one free day Erwin could spare for weeks to take Armin out to the zoo or aquarium should have annoyed him, it filled him instead with something like anticipation. “…or is he?”

 

* * *

 

Levi tried not to grin at the self-assured way with which Armin had invited him along. It was almost enough to make him forget about the way in which Erwin had said, “Healthy,” seemingly out of the blue, for no particular reason. He had had a twinkle in his eye that looked like he might be teasing him for some small transgression or another that he was unaware of, but that was neither here nor there.

True, he had never seen a lionfish, though Armin had spent the whole of one recess period trying to explain to him what it was and even pushing a step stool over to the whiteboard to draw something that looked vaguely blobby.

This weekend, though? He would hate to intrude on their time together, but Armin was looking up at him with gleeful eyes, and he thought he might detect a bit of a spark of anticipation in Erwin’s gaze. As for being very busy on the weekend, that was almost laughable. He dreaded weekends, if he was being truthful with himself, long hours ticking away into nothingness, punctuated with meal times and tinged with Kuchel’s soft unspoken worry that maybe he was overexerting himself.

“No, I’m not busy,” he replied, finally. It was, as Armin had said, important.  


	7. Chapter 7

“Look! Look, Mister Levi!”

Armin tugged on Levi’s sleeve and bounded across the dimly lit corridor. When Erwin had finally slipped through the dozen or so visitors crowding the jellyfish, he located the two by Armin’s voice, which rose over the general din to recite the placards below the lionfish display. Though Erwin had taken him here only once before, it seemed that had been all Armin needed to memorize the text on his favorites.

The fish in question swam lazily by as Erwin caught up, the white of its spines glowing in the low light. Armin drew an inquisitive crowd as he explained the purpose of its many fins in an accent that sounded remarkably like that of a pitched up David Attenborough. Erwin grinned and stooped to Levi’s ear to ask just how many of his films they showed in his class.

They had picked Levi up that morning, though Armin had dived into Erwin’s bed and shaken him awake long before the sun had even risen in his excitement. Maybe it was a big deal for him, Erwin thought. Armin had only ever seen Levi in school, as his teacher. It was only as they drove to pick him up that Armin asked from the back seat why they were taking a different road to get to class, and only when Erwin schooled the smile out of his voice did he explain that no, teachers don’t live in school.

Erwin, too, looked forward to the trip. It wasn’t often he was able to set aside the demands of the campaign for an afternoon, though he often found himself practicing for his next appearance or town hall under his breath in every spare moment whether or not he needed it. But from the moment Levi had climbed in with his collar drawn high against the wind and his black bag by his side, Erwin’s mind had not once wandered. Not toward the campaign.

As they walked out to get something to eat at the aquarium cafe, Erwin crouched by Armin to button his coat and clasp every clasp and wind his scarf round his cheeks until the boy squirmed and whined and slipped out of his reach to hide behind Levi, though by the man’s hawk-eye glances at the boy’s unmittened hands and lopsided hat, Erwin wagered he wouldn’t fare much better there.

Levi bent down to finish zipping up Armin’s jacket and adjust his pom-pom hat so that it covered both ears, tutting when Armin tried to wriggle out of the puffy coat sleeves. “You don’t want to catch a calm, do you?” he asked, frowning as he tugged at the stubborn metal tab, fighting back a smile at the way Armin giggled.  
  
It was certainly something else to see the boy out of school, his rosy cheeks shaded a quavering blue-green from the aquarium displays. He had slipped his hand tightly into Levi’s and clung to his fingers as he dragged him from one exhibit to the next, pressing tiny starfish hands to the glass and explaining carefully what each and every animal in the tanks was. Despite the fact that the aquarium was rather crowded that day, Levi found it oddly soothing, the large volumes of water and the fish swimming sedately through kelp forests and flicking lazy eyes at their viewers.  
  
Jellyfish pulsed through the water gracefully, their clear caps dancing green, red, purple with every flick of the soft dancing lights installed at the back of the tanks. Lionfish twitched their graceful, dangerous spines as they drifted through the larger tanks allocated to them, and Levi had felt a slow, smooth calm rolling its way into him in a way that he hadn’t felt since he’d started frantically studying for the exam in the hopes of finding a better future somewhere over the next horizon. The exam date loomed close, but to his surprise, today, Levi wasn’t nearly as anxious about it as he should have been. Spending time with Erwin and Armin, especially out of school hours, was quickly proving a dangerously soothing balm to his worries.  
  
He worked his way through a small chicken sandwich at a green plastic table outside the aquarium cafe, smiling and listening to Armin’s chattering about the different fish they’d seen inside, alternately taking small pecks at a grilled cheese and turning to tug at Erwin’s sleeve to beg him to let them stay long enough to see the piranhas feeding at 3:30. Levi let Armin’s flow of chatter drown him in ambient noise, and, much to his surprise, found that he understood nearly everything.  
  
He was still a bit confused about the piranhas part, though. Weren’t they those confetti decorations stuffed with candy at children’s birthday parties? Levi decided to leave that particular word alone for now. This was enough for the present moment. 

 

* * *

 

Erwin considered Armin’s request as the set of his mouth was mercifully hidden by his chewing. He had a meeting with an advocacy group later that afternoon. As he waited for Erwin to finish, Armin turned to Levi and regaled him with an episode of River Monsters where the host apparently fell into a piranha-rich river and emerged without a single bite.

It was a highly sought after meeting. The group could prove invaluable in getting out the vote all over the district, but only if negotiations began early. Erwin watched Armin supply the sound effects of the man falling and the river splashing around him. Levi’s mouth quirked at the performance. He steadied him when the boy nearly fell off the bench in his interpretive efforts.

Maybe it was the light that painted him so easy, so relaxed. But light doesn’t unknit brows. It doesn’t create that quiet huff Levi makes when he can’t quite suppress a laugh. Leaving now meant not only Armin’s disappointment but an end to this lighter and, dare he say, happier, Levi.

“I’m sorry, Armin,” he started, “we can’t stay that late tod-”

“Okay,” he said immediately, and launched into a reenactment of another episode.

Erwin barely stomached the wave of revulsion that followed that easy quip, one meant entirely for himself. Erwin had been hearing about piranhas every night that week. Armin wasn’t a cantankerous child, but he allowed himself a pout or two when he was refused something he wanted dearly. Erwin wondered if Armin expected his answer. He wondered when Armin would stop asking for anything at all, wondered if it had already begun.

As he began to mull over taking it all back and damning the meeting, Armin pulled on his sleeve again and thrust a pamphlet into his hands. The two must have gotten into some kind of disagreement while Erwin was thinking. Levi shot a wary look at the booklet as Armin implored Erwin to read the passage on manta rays. Erwin squinted as the sun glared on the glossy page.

“Manta rays-”

“Aha!” Armin said triumphantly. Levi froze for a moment before shrugging it off, though the stiff set of his shoulders betrayed him.

“Should I go on?” Erwin asked.

Armin shook his head and grabbed the page. “I can read it!” he declared. “Manta rays eat mico- eat micropo- mipro-” He groaned and set the page aside. Erwin ruffled his hair and folded his fingers until only his tiny pointer finger remained and guided his hand to trace the offending word.

“Mi – cro – sco – pic,” Erwin said, and Armin repeated. After another attempt at reading the passage, Armin grumbled again, cheeks flushed. On any other day, he would have just tried again without the slightest fuss, but it was clear the writers of these booklets were determined to sabotage the boy’s attempts at impressing the two. Erwin assured him he was doing well and pressed a kiss to his temple before picking up where he left off, inflecting and pausing the way he did in his speeches and the way Armin liked to hear. He thought he saw Levi watching him as he finished and looked up, but the man turned away before he could be sure.

 

* * *

 

Levi didn’t need words to read the disappointment written definite on Armin’s face. He had cut Erwin off with a bright “Okay” before Erwin had even finished his sentence, but when he turned back to describe another episode of what Levi thought might be the boy’s favorite TV show, he had a quiver about his mouth that hadn’t been there before. Levi had been tempted to offer to stay with Armin to watch the piranha feedings; the aquarium did have a rather calming vibe to it, the white noise of chatter blending back into ambience, but the offer quickly dissolved as he recalled that they would have no way of getting back and it was uncertain when Erwin’s other obligations would end. That, and the pamphlet Armin pushed into his hands that Levi definitely could not read, slowly worked away at Levi’s initial thoughts.  
  
It had been typed in 12 point script, and the gloss on the page had played hell on Levi’s mind. The words had swum like so many schools of fish, and he’d pushed it back towards Armin in defeat, mumbling something or other about how he wanted Armin to focus on improving his reading instead. The boy was far too perceptive for his own good, and Levi’s own shortcomings made him supremely uncomfortable. There wasn’t a point to a teacher who couldn’t teach, and Levi sent a quick prayer up to whoever might be watching that whatever had gone wrong would snap itself back into place sooner rather than later.  
  
Preferably before the exam, but he would understand if that was a bit of a stretch.  
  
Erwin’s voice was smooth and untroubled as he read through the pamphlet, and Levi allowed himself a brief moment of respite, letting himself be carried in the slipstream of Erwin’s unruffled syllables. The words filtered into his mind, not catching or snagging like they were prone to do, but this newfound leap in comprehension clearly wasn’t applicable to the written word.  
  
But, so far, Erwin and Armin had been the only two people whose speech he could understand, for the most part. Even with his mother and with the other children in Levi’s class, Levi had gotten quite good at faking responses, at predicting the way a response might go or a request might be made; if he was being well and truly honest with himself, however, Levi would have had to admit that a good chunk of conversation completely passed him by, something that continued to nag at him as the exam date loomed closer and closer. Perhaps there was something about the two, maybe something in their intonation or in their enunciation that Levi found more comprehensible than other people’s, and perhaps this was something that was worth investigating further.  
  
“You have a busy day after?” he asked Erwin nonchalantly, after the other man had stopped reading and pushed the glossy brochure back to his son, who was tracing the shapes of the sting rays with his finger. 

 

* * *

 

Erwin hummed an affirmative as he watched Armin pocketing the brochure and toddling off to throw away the wrappers from their lunches. “A meeting…” he started, though he wondered how much to divulge. It wasn’t a secret, surely, that he was running for office. Levi may already know – no, Erwin thought – Levi surely knew, if Mike’s efforts to carpet the district with his name worked as it should. But the campaign belonged to another universe, and this moment, this trip, to yet another, easier one. He missed it before it had even properly ended.

“…one I can’t call off even if I called in every last favor, unfortunately,” he joked, but that might not have been the way to go either. Now these ephemeral favors waded into his mind and brought with them voter demographics and regional statistics and without the focus of a singular goal, the information was little more than noise.

Armin returned having somehow acquired three more brightly colored brochures though Erwin was sure he’d kept his eye on him the entire time. He glanced at Levi to comment on it but stopped. He’d been so self absorbed that he hadn’t imagined Levi’s question was anything but idle conversation to pass the time between Armin’s trek to the bin. The man’s posture was uncomfortably straight and his hands positioned at once too casually and too stiffly to be convincingly natural. It wasn’t obvious: few passerby might catch it, but few passerby were Erwin.

Erwin walked them toward an exit and added, “I do have some freedom tomorrow. I wouldn’t dare skip Library Sundays.” Armin perked up at the name and his ruddy face split with his smile. Privately, Erwin promised himself he’d let Armin wander its halls an hour or two longer to make up for today’s transgression.


	8. Chapter 8

Library Sundays, huh? Levi used to frequent the library before his sudden and abrupt meeting with the front of a car, had used to wander down the aisles stacked thick with books for hours, pulling out stories with interesting covers and carting them over in a tall pile to a squashy armchair by the window. But since the words had started dancing out of control, Levi hadn’t been back; his blue library card was practically spinning cobwebs in a wallet slot, and he always felt mildly guilty whenever he flicked open the leather leaves in the mornings to make sure his identification was inside the plastic sleeve.   
  
Surely Erwin was busy with his campaign. He’d been hard to miss, what with all the mentions in the newspaper columns and the occasional advertisement, and Levi wondered how Armin was holding up under all the scrutiny and attention. It couldn’t be easy for him, Levi decided. It couldn’t be easy for both of them. There would be speculation about his mother, and why erwin was a single parent, and some gossip rags would probably slam the two of them for slipping a bag of pretzels into Armin’s lunchbox instead of the “mommy-approved” baggie of apple slices.   
  
But he spent time with Armin, on educational outings like the aquarium and the library, so surely that had to count for something, right? Levi watched as Armin spread out another three brochures on the tabletop, babbling away and pointing at the pictures. Surely it would be difficult for people to find anything to criticize about Erwin Smith, except maybe for the fact that he was late picking his son up occasionally. But which parent wasn’t?  
  
“If you’re busy tomorrow, I could watch him for a bit,” Levi offered, surprising even himself. He should have been studying; he had planned for a full day of preparation tomorrow, but somehow, this seemed much more important at the moment. “I’m sure you’re busy with your campaign and all that,” he added hastily. 

 

* * *

 

Erwin didn’t answer immediately. His instinct was to categorically refuse – he couldn’t possibly burden Levi on the weekend again, even for an hour or two. As if anticipating his response, Levi had zeroed in on the one thing that might change Erwin’s mind. Weekends were precious for strategizing and drawing crowds, but to Armin, they were a toss up between being stuck at home with an overworked babysitter or being passed around at some too-big, too-loud event.

“I couldn’t possibly impose-” Erwin began, but he trailed off at Levi’s unconvinced look, and even if he hadn’t, Armin’s delighted gasp and earnest ‘please!’s were more than enough to chip away at his misgivings.

“Only if you’re sure-” Erwin started, and again, Levi made it known through a quirk of his brow that he did not suggest anything he hadn’t the intention of following through. Armin slipped into the conversation to tell Levi which sections in the library were his favorite and where he usually liked to sit as Levi hummed along and Erwin started the car. They agreed on a time in between Armin’s impromptu lesson on the Dewey Decimal system.

When they came home, Mike called to urge Erwin to cancel anything he had planned for Sunday morning. Malone had a new campaign manager.

Once Armin was dropped off, Erwin drove to Mike’s. The man had converted his apartment into campaign headquarters to save on office rent, so it wasn’t surprising to see the odd volunteer or intern clacking at their laptops in the kitchen or foyer, but Erwin had never seen so many in his flat at once.

Mike ushered him into his office and locked the door. He held up a hand as Erwin took a seat in his desk chair.

“I’m not saying we’re fucked-”

Erwin shook his head amiably. “I feel better already.”

Mike paced. Mike never paced.

“It’s Nile,” Erwin said.

“It’s Nile.”

Erwin took up a pen and twirled it in his hand. Beneath it were dozens of pages marked with flowcharts that seemed to analyze every possible contingency to come from this news.

“He shouldn’t be a problem,” Erwin said as he scanned the pages. “We know Nile. And even if we didn’t, his past campaigns are public. They’re roadmaps. We know how he thinks.”

“That’s another thing,” Mike said, and sat in an armchair opposite. “Don’t be so sure. He’s not the Nile who covered for us in freshman P.E. He’s not the guy who gave you half his sandwich in third grade. Even with his campaign records, we can’t assume anything.”

“I know, Mike.”

“You could know it up here, Erwin,” Mike said, pointing to his own head. “But when we’re down to the wire, we can’t-”

“What’s this?” Erwin asked. A name caught his eye in the mess of flowcharts and prospective timelines. He thumbed through them and turned back to Mike. “She has no involvement in any of this,” he started slowly, “Just because she’s married to-”

“Let’s say Nile’s a stand up guy, Erwin,” Mike said, because he knew whose name had stopped Erwin cold. “Let’s say his morals are as thick as his skull. He’s not the boss of that operation. Malone is.”

“Does Malone know?”

“Beats me.”

“Nile wouldn’t tell him something like this-”

“Nile doesn’t have to. Malone’s only gotta ask the right questions to the right people. Bug a car or two, plant a mole.” He sighed. “From here on out, we operate as if he knows. If we’re not prepared for the fallout-”

“I know,” Erwin said. He rubbed his temples.

“We could also come out with it now.”

Come out with a non-scandal. Air a private misunderstanding for all the world to pick apart. Throw his son to the wolves.

Mike shrugged. “It’ll solve Armin. Two birds, one st-”

“Solve him,” Erwin echoed coldly.

Mike gave him a look. “Don’t do that. You know what I meant. Every time you dodge the Mrs. Smith questions you throw chum in the water. And think of it this way – you get first spin. If we’re careful, we make it a non-issue, and every effort by Malone to make it an issue will make him out to be the shark he is.”

Erwin watched the gleam on the barrel of the ball point pen. Mike was doing his best to mitigate the blow of his proposal, and Erwin was grateful. Erwin was also ready to crawl out of his skin. If it were only him, he’d be on his way to a press conference ten minutes ago. If it were only him, he’d face the press a million times.

But it wasn’t only him. He had Armin. He only had Armin, and Armin only had him. And if he didn’t tell the boy himself, he’d hear it from someone else that he had a mother, hear from some rambling radio host or pundit why she left, hear words like accident, like mistake.

“I’ll think about it,” Erwin said with an iron tongue. He knew Mike would have preferred that he had his answer immediately, but he only nodded. He walked him to Erwin’s car and didn’t bother with platitudes like We’ll get through this or You’ll be fine. He only lay a hand on his shoulder and squeezed once, and Erwin was grateful.

Erwin found the two in the nonfiction section. Though Armin had a penchant for grabbing too many books at once in his excitement and reading several at once, they were piled neatly then, and the ones that were left open to a certain page were arranged in neat grids. That must be Levi’s handiwork. The man himself was leaning against the shelves where he sat and had one hand raised to tuck the boy’s hair behind his ear when Erwin found them. The scene dropped in his chest like a stone.

He opened his mouth to call out to them, but his throat didn’t obey. Armin looked up first and bounded toward him, regaling him with something Erwin wasn’t anywhere near understanding. He knelt and embraced him until the boy squirmed away, but not before he kissed his forehead and his cheeks and his nose and told him how he loved him because he didn’t say it enough, didn’t say it nearly enough.

When Erwin stood and Armin scampered back to his books, he saw that Levi had risen. Levi, who treated his son as his own person rather than an extension of Erwin or a means to garner favor. Levi, who might even know Armin better than Erwin ever could, who taught Armin and read to Armin because he wanted to and because Armin deserved it.

“Thank you, Levi,” Erwin said, not trusting his voice above a murmur. Levi moved closer to hear. “I don’t know anyone who can keep up with Armin like you can.” Erwin reached for an envelope in his coat pocket, and though he wanted desperately to return the favor, money seemed so cold and so unfeeling a trade, and though the amount he slipped into Levi’s hands was nothing to scoff at, he’d give anything to know how to follow it up with something warmer.

 

* * *

 

Things hadn’t been going as well as he’d hoped at home. He knew, and Kuchel knew, that the examination date was looming over them, only a scant few months away, and Levi was still nowhere nearly as prepared as he had hoped to be on the crude timeline he’d plotted out for himself nearly half a year ago. He was still struggling with some of the most basic words, and that wasn’t even discussing the way longer sentences and complex paragraphs tripped him up.   
  
“Where are you going?” she’d asked him that morning, softly, as if in an attempt to couch the hidden implications in her words. Levi had stiffened, stared down into his bowl of oatmeal as though it might have the answers, because the truth was, he knew he was wasting time, he knew that he should be studying furiously if he ever wanted the chance to have even some semblance of a brighter future. He knew for a fact that Erwin would undoubtedly have made arrangements for someone to watch Armin had Levi not inserted himself into their lives.   
  
Imposing. It was a word he’d had to look up yesterday evening, and one that he desperately tried to hang on to. The meanings of words seemed to slip through one ear and out the other these days, unless he committed them firmly to memory.   
  
“The library,” he ground out, hoping his mother wouldn’t see the way his hand had grown white-knuckled around its grip on his spoon.   
  
“Will you be studying at the library?” Kuchel already knew to speak to him in short, simple questions, her voice even and level so that there was no chance of misunderstanding, but Levi knew only too well how even the shortest and simplest sentences could stretch out webs of complexity if one only tried to examine it a bit closer.   
  
He sighed. “I’ll try to,” he hedged, hoping this would placate her. She sighed back, and he knew it hadn’t. “Fine,” he mumbled. “If you really want to know so badly, I’ll be lodging Armin for quarters.”   
  
“Armin?” Kuchel asked, as though Levi’s explanation had made perfect sense. Levi knew it hadn’t; the words felt all wrong coming out of his mouth, but he’d had no better way to remedy it. “He’s that boy you teach at the school, isn’t he? The brilliant young reader?”  
  
“Right,” Levi muttered, turning back to his oatmeal. His spoon scraped along the edges of the bowl. “The…” He had meant to repeat Kuchel’s sentence, the brilliant young reader, but the words refused to come, and even as he thought about them they dissipated like smoke. “Him,” he finished, lamely.   
  
Kuchel frowned across the table at him. “Say it,” she prompted him, gently. “The brilliant young reader, Armin.”   
  
That’s unfair! Levi wanted to protest. You added an extra word. “The…” As he fumbled for the next word, something with a buh sound in it, he was sure, he had already forgotten it. Beneath the table, his fingers dug into his jean-clad thigh in frustration. “The…”   
  
Kuchel sighed, rubbing at her temples, where the hair was streaked with grey. Levi didn’t want to worry her more than he already did, but repetition was impossible, and the implications of his inability to do so were even more frightening. “Whatever,” he said, finally, before she could say anything further. “I’ve got to go.”

  
+

  
Levi never failed to be surprised by Armin’s passion for reading. Normally it was hard to get the pre-school children excited in Story Time or anything that even remotely resembled a book, but Levi had a suspicion that if he were to design a lesson plan for Armin and Armin alone, Story Time would probably begin right after morning drop-off and end right before afternoon pick-up. Armin grabbed piles of books, not even picture ones from the shelves, and managed to coerce Levi into carrying a hefty stack before plopping down in the nonfiction section, spreading the books out around him as he scrunched his little face up and tried to determine what to read first.  
  
Levi watched in awe as Armin selected a fat book that he’d picked from a lower shelf, something that he thought was definitely not a children’s book, and began to devour the words, enraptured in the fantasy world he’d already lost himself in. After a few moments of silence, Armin seemed to remember that he was there. “Do you want me to read to you, Mr. Levi?” he asked, looking almost hopeful. Levi could only breathe a sigh of relief that Armin hadn’t asked him to read. He had a feeling a venture like that would have taken at least a good week or so, at the rate he read these days.   
  
“I would love that,” he replied with a smile, and Armin sat back, cleared his throat, and began to read out loud in a high, reedy voice.

  
+

  
The hours flew past before Levi knew it, and all too soon Erwin was walking down the carpeted aisle, holding his arms out for Armin and holding out an envelope for Levi. Levi knew it was money even as he reluctantly accepted it; the crisp feeling of tightly folded bills pressed through the thin packet.  
    
“Oh, please don’t worry about this,” Levi said, trying to hand the packet back, but Erwin was having none of it. “I really shove lodging Armin.”   
  
Erwin arched an eyebrow at him. Misspoken again. Accidents. Mistakes. Levi hated it, this bitter loss of language. He especially dreaded the day when, not if, Erwin would look at him with pity, when, not if, Erwin would try to give him charity because he thought Levi was unfortunate, and his lack of competence in even simple conversation only seemed to be speeding up that inevitable confrontation.   
  
But watching Erwin with Armin seemed to paint the man in a different light. No matter how tired he looked, or how stressed, Erwin always had a hug and a kiss for his son. Levi was sure the political campaign was taking up a large chunk of his time, but Erwin was being the best father he could be under the circumstances, and Levi sincerely hoped that Armin would grow up to be as wonderful of a man as his father was.   
  
“You don’t need to pay me to watch your son,” he mumbled, eyes downcast as he nudged at a spot of lint on the library carpet. “He is a brilliant young reader.” His eyes widened even as the words left his mouth. His mother had said the exact same thing. 

 

* * *

 

Erwin held his eye a moment longer than strictly necessary as the cogs upstairs worked double-time to interpret what the man had said.

“Oh,” Erwin said stupidly once he’d put it together, “I’m sorry,” he added still more belatedly, and in an attempt to distract from how long it had taken him to understand, added also, “Yes, he's…either a perfect joy or a terror in the library, very little in-between.”

He thought Levi may have cocked his head inquisitively, so he went on, “I might have scored holes in these carpets trying to find him the first few times I took him here. Tragedy of the century when he found out we couldn’t stay overnight-”

Erwin felt a tug at his sleeve.

“Papa,” Armin called. “I read to Mr. Levi today.”

“Did you?” Erwin smiled. He was ready to say more before Armin bounded away into another aisle, maybe even to another floor. Coos and greetings called after him. All the volunteers knew him, even the regulars.

Erwin hummed wistfully and gathered up Armin’s books. “I think I envy you your Story Time. He won’t let me read to him anymore, so sure he has to prove himself.” He passed by that familiar black messenger bag, propped against the shelves. He heard himself saying, “I think I miss it.”

“You must be hungry. There’s a great place on 42nd street, quiet, never too crowded,” he said, disbelieving what he was saying even as the words left him. He hadn’t planned this. He wasn’t impulsive. Not like this. He slipped his hand through the strap of the messenger bag and held it out for Levi. “Armin’s babysitter is waiting for him, we’ll only need to drop him off on the way. He drops like a stone each time we leave.” As an afterthought, he added, “Only if you don’t mind. I don’t want to impose.”

 

* * *

 

Levi had had every intention of turning down Erwin’s offer, but as though the fates were conspiring against him, Erwin had chosen to use that one word that was still fresh and rolling about in Levi’s mind. Impose, imposing, imposition, when there were surely so many other words that could mean the exact same thing.   
  
“No, I don’t mind at all,” he replied, before hastening to bite back his words. He didn’t want to appear too eager; after all, his test prep books were all but shouting at him to brush away the offer from another corner of his mind, and his mother’s disappointed gaze chased him from another. They meant well, all of them did, but the temptation of spending more uninhibited time with Erwin was one that was too strong to resist. He’d bypassed all of Levi’s expectations, and had made the twists and turns of the english language seem almost navigable. He hadn’t pushed too far into why Levi was how he was, for lack of a better way to put it; he didn’t push and prod and beg Levi to repeat sentences verbatim, and Levi appreciated it greatly. With Erwin, he felt like he was almost normal, and it was only running his hand up to graze against the silver scars his bangs concealed that reminded him that he wasn’t the same person he’d been before the words had deserted him and left him breathless. 

Armin had already run off to another section of the library, and Levi slotted the books they’d selected onto a returns cart and followed Erwin up the stairs.


	9. Chapter 9

Armin seemed to clock out the moment Erwin switched on the engine. He'd curled up with a battered old book with a dragon on the cover. Erwin could have sworn he'd finished it weeks ago, but he held onto it even so, the way other kids might cling to blankets or stuffed animals.

Nifa leapt from her seat on the bench near the building's entrance when Erwin parked and waved to get her attention. He introduced her and Levi before unbuckling a sleeping Armin and tucking his fallen mittens back on his hands as Nifa waved shyly at Levi. Seeing Armin all done up and ready to go, she reached out for him and patiently listened to Erwin remind her of Armin's sleeping habits and food allergies even as he was distantly aware that he's had this conversation more than once.

Erwin made idle conversation on the way to the cafe, which was blessedly quiet even for a Sunday afternoon. They hadn't even ordered before he was sure he'd made himself out to be a flustered fool. He shouldn't be so taken with Levi's easy answers, with his untroubled looks, as if he honestly didn't mind that Erwin felt for once that he needn't second guess himself, didn't mind even when he might have mispronounced or forgotten a word or two in his excitement. Erwin couldn't remember a thing he'd said, even after it just just left his own mouth. He cataloged the ten minutes or so it had taken them to find the cafe instead with Levi's wordless hums, with his soft huffs of laughter and with wry barely-there smiles at Erwin's attempts at humor.

“Sorry,” he said as they waited on line, the familiar rows of wraps and pastries and the consoling scent of brewing coffee calming the live wires that held his tongue hostage, “Every word I say recently needs to be tested and focus-grouped a dozen times over. Not having to worry about saying every little thing perfectly, well…I hope you won't let me get too carried away.”

-

Levi had to restrain himself from blurting out that the same thing happened to him. It was an everyday ordeal, frustrating in more ways than one, harder because he'd loved reading once upon a time. He swapped letters and words for others with frightening regularity, and every time his mother or Armin (especially Armin!) pointed it out, he felt like lashing out. Didn't they think Levi knew? It was no way to live, second-guessing at every step and noting every raised eyebrow or perplexed look he got when he invariably slipped up. 

He'd never touched a bicycle again, either, and his old ten-speed leaned dented against the wall of the garage, rusting away, its basket twisted and snapped. Levi had never been able to understand why his mother kept it. Sentimental value? A reminder of the time he'd been normal? Normal was such a harsh word, he mused to himself as his gaze wandered absentmindedly over Erwin's face, losing himself in the soft rise and dip of his voice. 

"Curried away," he mused to himself. "I won't let you curry away if you don't let me." 

Erwin's mouth pinched together for the briefest of moments, and Levi knew that somewhere in the past sentence, somewhere in the past eleven words he'd fucked up again. But, surprisingly, he didn't feel that aching discomfort in the pit of his belly that he always got whenever he noticed someone's inquisitive, almost disdainful stare. Erwin's gaze was softer, compassionate. He understood, and Levi was running short on understanding, himself. He'd take whatever he could get. 

"So..." he murmured, his fingers drumming on the table. "How is your champagne going?" 

_

“Well enough-” Erwin started, but looked up as their order number was called. He gave Levi a smile before rising and bringing it back to their table.

“My, uh, my mountain is steeper than my rival's,” Erwin started, “Richard Malone is the incumbent representative. More name recognition and much – much – more money to spend-”

Erwin went on for a few minutes, and gauging by Levi's reactions that he doesn't mind hearing his ideas about accessibility in and to public education but might not be as interested as Erwin in historical district turnout rates.  
He noticed, too, that he had guessed correctly in his approach to the man's language. He'd wondered, with every almost-there-but-not-quite turn of phrase how he should respond. He'd taught plenty of students with a spectrum of verbal peculiarities, with stammering the most common among them. He would have hardly thought it fair to call attention to it, and he thought the same now. Surely, Levi had only to ask if he wanted Erwin or anyone else to correct him, though seeing that brief wash of relief on his face at Erwin's non-interference was telling. He must be receiving these corrections incessantly from people, strangers even, who meant well, unknowing that what was, to them, a single interruption was the day's umpteenth to Levi. 

“-and November fourth seems a long ways away but-” Erwin stopped. Levi's brows drew together at the abrupt pause and Erwin laughed softly. He hadn't even even touched his food. “I think that's enough of me for a while. What about you, Levi? How are the kids?” he asked, steering the man away from any mention of his exam if he didn't intend to bring it up himself. Erwin remembered being a student too well. Nothing spiked blood pressure and wired nerves hot like test talk.

-

Levi nudged at the food on his plate absentmindedly. He picked up the croissant, the dough flaking between his fingers as he set it back on the plate again, uneaten. He wasn't hungry; his stomach was in knots, slightly nervous at Erwin's proximity. Without Armin to act as a buffer, like he had that day at the aquarium, Levi could sense that they were trespassing dangerously into previously uncharted waters. The table was too small for the both of them, and Levi's knees were knocking against Erwin's at every turn and every twitch. He could feel a blush creeping up his face at the unsolicited contact, and tried to tamp it down as furiously as possible by thinking hard about how best to answer Erwin's question. 

"Messy," he concluded finally, after several moments of thought in which he let the white noise of the other customers' chatter wash over him like soothing waves. "But they're kids, you know?" He shrugged up at Erwin, as though to express his distaste. "Armin's a good boy." The word 'good' stuck with him, and he found himself babbling, an avalanche of vocabulary and words that begun with 'G' that he'd encountered over the last few days. "Good, great, goldenrod, gracious, galvanized." He pinched at his thigh fiercely beneath the table, and the sudden small sensation of pain was enough to stop him from babbling and embarrassing himself any further. 

It was no use trying to contain his blush anymore, and he dropped his eyes to stare at his plate of flaking pastry, unwilling to meet Erwin's gaze. He was sure it was full of pity. 

_

Erwin couldn't hide the surprise from his face, and then the chuckle starting low in his throat, and before it turned into an honest laugh, he finally thought to cover his mouth with a loose fist.

“That was wonderful,” Erwin finally said, barely able to speak with the grin he knew must reach his ears. Suddenly, he recalled something that reddened his ears even as it filled his chest with a warm pull of nostalgia. Without thinking much of it, he touched Levi's wrist and said, “Oh, that reminds me of all the years I tried and tried at spoken word poetry. You'd sooner teach a dog to drive than get any kind of rhythm out of me.”

It was hardly an exaggeration. His first few attempts early in college were not quite a disaster but certainly nothing to brag about, and even at his best, the most he had accomplished was unintentionally starting politically fueled brawls in the clubs he'd performed in. He made the switch to the model UN and the mock trial club not long after.

Despite letting go of the hobby, all the years he'd trained his ear to appreciate rhythm had not been for nothing. It remained with him still, along with the sort of appreciation for wordplay that had him writing his own speeches more often than not. He wondered now if that was what had him taking a liking to Levi and all his words that didn't quite belong and yet were alone more memorable than hours of conversation with most anyone else.

Privately, he knew by Levi's reactions to his own words that there was a chance he may not entirely control what he said or how he said it, but to Erwin, it hardly mattered. Hearing him was a joy regardless.

Erwin gave his hand a light squeeze before bringing his coffee cup to his mouth and licking a wayward drop from his bottom lip. “You'd be a natural,” he said with a wink.

_

Erwin had laughed at him, as Levi had expected; it was a common reaction from people who didn't quite know him in the capacity that his mother did. Or the doctors he'd seen for a few weeks after the accident, but he didn't count them. They were paid not to laugh, not to be scornful, or at least they had been until the insurance had run out and he'd been abruptly and violently discharged into a world that he was no longer a part of. 

But, much to his surprise, Erwin's laughter wasn't mocking. He was praising Levi, in an open and honest way that Levi couldn't see as anything but genuine, saying something about poetry and the spoken word and Levi being a natural, which Levi knew meant that he found Levi talented in it. His touch on Levi's wrist sent a flare of panic bubbling up into Levi's heart, the flush on his cheeks spreading to kiss at the tops of his ears and crawl down to rest in the hollow of his throat, and it was only through sheer will and determination that he managed to keep from rudely jerking his hand away from Erwin's touch. 

But, there was that. Erwin didn't know him, or he hadn't known the Levi of before. Levi could start over, a blank slate, promising and full of potential. The thought was as inspiring as it was frightening, and Levi forced himself to focus on the first feeling. 

He peeked up at Erwin shyly through a fall of dark hair. "You really think so?" he asked, smiling despite his reservations. "I'd be a national? I've never tried that..." He paused, sounding out the sibilance of the first between his teeth. "Spoken -" He fell off, the words still slick and slippery in his mind and refusing to find purchase. "Whatever you said," he finished, lamely, waving his hand as though to wave off his failures with a nonchalance that he hardly felt. 

-

Levi smiled, and for the first time, Erwin couldn't look at him for long. It wasn't hollow, wasn't tempered by bemusement or wryness. It hurt to see in the way few things pained him but the sublime. Erwin's gyro went down hard.

“Absolutely,” he said, and opened his mouth to say more, but he checked himself in time. They were friendly, sure, but it was one thing to have coffee and quite another had Erwin let himself say what he'd been thinking ever since the day Levi had thanked him for the books. He hated that Levi spoke so little. He hated that when he did, he silenced himself before long anyway, hated even more that there was good reason for it, that every big and small, deliberate or accidental cruelty on the part of some obtuse bystander reinforced his entirely well-founded and yet deeply unjust compulsion to say as little as possible and bow to the laws of probability. Fewer words, fewer – and Erwin hated calling them this as surely as he had hated his prescriptivist professors - “mistakes”.

Still, he couldn't say nothing at all, couldn't live with the irony if he lamented what Levi was doing as he did the very same.

“Honestly, it's a long way off. The election, I mean. All this prep so soon, Mike thinks it might even be overkill.” Erwin paused, staring into his cup. “What I mean is, if you ever need any help with that exam or you just want to talk or – or anything at all, don't hesitate for a second,” he said with a nonchalance he hardly felt.


	10. Chapter 10

Levi didn't like admitting that he needed help, hadn't liked it since he'd been a child, and had liked it even less after the bicycle accident that had landed him in the hospital for a period of time that blurred fuzzy around the edges in his memory. But Erwin was essentially tossing him a life saver, giving him an opening so that he wouldn't have to ask for it himself. And Erwin would probably have some tips and tricks about getting a successful exam result; after all, he'd taken the initiative to replace Levi's outdated and significantly less helpful review materials. 

 

And, truth was, even though he could tell that he was making progress through the books and the materials, Levi knew that he wasn't going through it nearly as fast as he should have been. He was falling rapidly behind schedule, with every passing day, every passing minute, and he still couldn't get through a full test without the words suddenly turning into a jumble of nonsense halfway through. 

 

He grabbed at the assistance Erwin was offering him like a drowning man. 

 

"Yes, I'd like help," he burst out, the words eager and clear and desperate in a way that he hoped Erwin couldn't hear. "I mean, if you're okay with that, I know you're full of business but I could maybe watch Armin if you're working on your champagne or something." He was babbling, but excitement and delight in the knowledge that Erwin was offering help when he was reluctant to ask for it made his words spill out in rivers. "I've been so lost." 

 

-

 Erwin nodded. “Of course. Better not to go it alone with an exam like that,” he said. Inwardly, he was relieved. He'd imagined Levi would refuse. He would have had every right to, of course, and every right to do what he pleased. Erwin was grateful, too, for the last admission – it took no little courage to admit, he knew.

“Strike a deal with me, Levi,” he said. In lieu of payment, he asked if Levi wasn't opposed to coming along to the occasional weekend campaign event to watch Armin while Erwin spoke. There was no need during the weekday – Armin was safe in school – but on weekends, he was passed along like a bothersome object if he wasn't stuck at home with a babysitter. Sure, he was the darling of his campaign staff and spoiled by them within an inch of his life, but he was never a priority. If Levi agreed to watch him during those stops in exchange for lessons, Erwin might even be able to get through an entire speech without once imagining in the middle of it every possible disturbing scenario that could come from leaving a small child with distracted caretakers in crowded halls.

Erwin also suggested they meet in the library. He took out his phone, sent Levi his schedule for the week and hoped one of their free hours coincided as he finished his coffee.

-

Levi eyed the schedule Erwin had sent him, considering. Now that the initial enthusiasm had started to wear off, reluctance was starting to step in again. He didn't want to appear too eager, but truth was, time was running out. 

 

"The weekends would be good for me," he said, slowly. It would certainly get him out of the house and away from his mother's silent disappointment and concern. "I would love to help you." He blinked at the schedule again. Erwin was certainly a busy man, from the looks of it, but he had a solid chunk of time on Thursday that blinked back blank and clear. "This day," he said, tapping on it and looking at Erwin inquisitively. "This day would work. The library is open late on This days." 

 

His frantic mind settled down, the white noise of the cafe melting into him gently, and for the first time in a while, Levi thought that perhaps everything might work out in the end. 

 

-

 

He was going to be late. For the most absurd reason he could imagine, he was going to be late picking up both Armin and Levi to their first session because he couldn't decide between a gray shirt and a blue.

_The blue will bring out your eyes._

Erwin shook his head free of the thought, an amalgamation of every time the line was spoken by some romcom supporting character and certainly to him earnestly by his mother or jokingly by Mike.

He told Mike that he and Armin were visiting the library. It wasn't necessarily a lie. It seemed that every moment of his time was cataloged somewhere, every detail of it combed over, packaged, and spun. No doubt Mike would want to play this arrangement to hell and back if he knew of it, play it – though Erwin doubted would stoop to this – like some charity case, something right out of the Hallmark channel. The thought alone plunged him into a cold fury. No, Erwin wouldn't tell Mike.

It was decided for him when he remembered that he'd worn the gray the other day, but some treacherous part of him was relieved at that. He put on the blue, threw on his coat and gathered their study materials under his arm before driving to school. They stopped at a diner on the way for dinner, Armin's choice. Armin explained every menu item with excruciating clarity, and though passerby might comment – and have – that he was looking at a promising culinary career with the way he described why the steak couldn't by any means be cooked in an inferior pan, Armin was this way about everything that caught his attention, so focused that sometimes it felt as if he wouldn't budge from his reading if the moon fell into the sea.

But Armin lasted maybe two pages into his book beside them in the library before the day began to weigh on him and quicken his yawns. Erwin cushioned his head with a blanket he'd brought in from the car. Levi's eyes darted between his own books and to Armin, and Erwin guessed at what he thought.

“He's always out like a rock,” Erwin said, “We won't disturb him.”

Levi gave him a look that Erwin hoped hadn't reddened his ears as much as he felt it had. Of course Levi knew how Armin slept. He saw him more often than Erwin did these days – these weeks. Erwin hadn't spoken much at all at the diner for how much the two bantered well enough on their own. But he wasn't jealous. He wondered if he should be.

As he returned to his seat next to Levi, he was checking over the quick diagnostic exam Erwin suggested he take before they get started. No sense in covering well trodden ground.

Erwin moved his chair closer when Levi finished. “While we work together, I will correct you both here,” he said, pointing to the exam, “and verbally. If I don't catch your meaning, if I'm off by even a little, do not hesitate to correct me in turn. You're here not to avoid mistakes but to make them, and to learn from them. I'll guide you." Erwin waited until Levi met his eye before he asked, "Do you trust me?”

-

"I trust your decisions," Levi agreed, though he was more than a little nervous about his first session with Erwin, swallowing roughly as he pushed his practice exam paper over to Erwin. He'd given it his best try, which was already more than he could honestly say over the diagnostic exams he had taken on his own or with his mother's help. He wasn't too sure why he wanted to impress Erwin too much; it was probably some combination of desperation and the fact that he and Erwin had no previous background to go off of. Levi as he was now was the Levi Erwin had always known. There was no before. 

 

He'd told his mother someone was helping him prepare for the exam, and she had smiled faintly at him before reminding him to be careful crossing the streets and sent him on his way. He wondered if she was relieved that someone else would be shouldering the burden, and he shoved the thought hastily to the back of his mind. 

 

He watched tensely as Erwin looked over his exam, eyes flipping from the test booklet to the answer sheet and back again. His fingers had curled tightly around the worn wooden armrests of the chair, and not even the snuffles of Armin's breathing beside them could relax him. Erwin's deep blue shirt looked like the sea, the darker parts of the tanks in the aquarium they had visited, and Levi held onto the memory of calmly swimming fish and waving fronds to ground him. His mind started to wander again, wondering what Erwin might be like in as himself. Not a politician, not a teacher, not a father. Just himself. Levi had just agreed that Erwin would probably be fantastic, a warm blanket on a snowy night, when he caught himself staring intensely across the table, and dragged his eyes away quickly. 

 

"Does it look okay?" he asked, before he could help himself. 


	11. Chapter 11

Nearly every answer was incorrect. Erwin checked it again and then the answers in the back of the reading comp study guide, but the verdict remained. What struck Erwin, though, were the answers Levi had chosen. There was no logical progression from question to answer. More often than not, they were the most wildly unlikely option. It didn't make sense. He couldn't connect the results to the man in front of him, a man he knew to be sharp and unnervingly observant however he pretended not to be.

He had singled out things at the aquarium Erwin had never known to look for, despite having gone there with Armin more often than he can count. Levi had frowned at something occasionally, and at Armin's prodding, shrugged and explained why. The scarring on a fin matching a poorly placed outcrop in the way of a simulated current. A section of delicate reef beginning to wilt because the walkway layout curved at such an angle that it tripled its exposure to the reflective surfaces of the informational placards opposite the glass. He'd shrugged when Armin lit up. Said it was obvious.

Good, great, goldenrod, gracious, galvanized.

Levi's choices were not random. They weren't illogical. From what Erwin had seen, he expressed himself in two wildly different ways. He was, at times, technically-minded and hyperfocused, and in others, boundless and abstract.

Campaign. Champagne.

It was more than conflation of words that sound alike or words that rhyme or share meaning. Levi's mind must move at such a speed and take such unorthodox roads – roads that he himself might not even be aware of - that something, somehow, became lost between his thoughts and his mouth. Maybe even between his thoughts and his own understanding of them.

Erwin chewed on his lip. The first question asked why the man in the passage would visit his father. Contextually, it was clear that he did so because his father was dying. Levi chose the answer that suggested the man went to accept his father's job offer. It was the most patently unlikely of the four, and Erwin might not have even given it mind if it weren’t for the next question, which asked what the man did afterward. The book maintained that the man visited an old park. Levi's answer suggested the man sailed into the open ocean. Another baldly incorrect option. The “obviously” incorrect one thrown in for the sake of having a certain number of options.

The third question simply asked why. The correct answer was that the park “reminded him of his father”. Levi's answer:

“To fulfill a promise.”

There was no such promise in the text, none that Erwin could recall. He read the passage again. None.

Distantly, he thinks Levi might have asked him something.

But there was one line, perfectly throwaway, the kind that might have been cut had the testmakers desired more space on the opposite page or something equally inconsequential. A line about the father's love of the sea after a long mariner's life. A line about wanting to go back, even as he lay bedridden, always wanting to go back, in some way. In some form.

Erwin leaned back from the weight of the realization. Levi looked on with long-undisguised worry on his face, and Erwin knew he had taken much too long already, but Erwin needed to understand. And Erwin needed Levi to understand.

“Levi,” he started, “You have no idea the extent to which this exam underestimates you.”

Erwin went on before he could interrupt. “Ordinarily, this section of the exam tests analysis and comprehension. That, you have in such abundance that I wonder if even you understand what abilities, what untapped talent you have. The mathematics sections will be a walk. You mix your ones with your sevens, your fours with your nines and your eights with zeros but that can be mitigated easily – all it takes is mindful substitution - looking for symbols that don't...swim.”

Armin might have mentioned that one a few times, Levi's occasional admission during or after Storytime. The kids got a good laugh imagining it literally, but Erwin, and, he suspected, Armin, had understood.

Erwin leaned forward and watched Levi carefully. “But these passages will give you the greatest difficulty. You think at times like a laser, at others, like a radar, each method with their own strengths. You'll want to resist being confined to these tight linear halls of logic, of dry and obvious chronological progression. You find diamonds in these pages written by some uncaring, overworked contractor with a three o-clock deadline, passages pummeled into the blandest things by rounds and rounds of boardroom revisions. You'll want to make something of them, transform them, and anywhere else in the world, that'd be an admirable quality, but not here.” Erwin sighed. “I admit, I'm complicit in this, giving you these books. I hadn't known at the time. Their advice is good, but it's not anywhere near the kind you need.”

Erwin set the books aside. “I'm going to teach how to get inside the testmaker's mind. How to play a role. How to lie.”

 

-

 

Levi had spent the majority of the time Erwin took looking over his test gnawing at his lower lip until it stung swollen and tender beneath the points of his teeth. Surely that couldn't be good, Erwin flipping back and forth between the answer key and the test pages over and over, his eyebrows furrowing just the slightest in worry and more than a bit of confusion as his eyes flicked over the passages. Here it was, his ruination, and he hadn't even had a chance to explain that he wasn't slow or trying to waste Erwin's time. The reason was on the tip of his tongue - I wasn't always like this - but then Erwin closed the book with a soft thwap and looked earnestly up at him to assure him of his brilliance. 

The feeling was stunning, overwhelming, bubbling effervescence in his heart. The word had stuck with him since he'd read it on a menu ages ago, at one of those old-fashioned diners with the fluorescent lamps buzzing gritty overhead and the food choices ensconced behind a thick film of sticky plastic. He had been okay then, his mind and body intact, and he thought that maybe he'd been reading a book, humming to himself as his eyes skimmed flawlessly over the pages. Understanding. Comprehending. He would have given almost anything to be that man again. 

Only almost, though, because meeting Erwin's eyes across the table sent a little flutter into his heart, like the vaguest feeling of hope that all was not lost. 

"To lie?" he asked, faintly, considering Erwin's proposition. He swallowed nervously. He had been trying to lie his way out of everything since, had been trying to pretend that he was normal as normal could be, but veneers tended to crack, facades tended to melt away in the face of kindness, as they were doing now. Barriers, carriers, harriers. Harried. Anxious. The tension melted out of Levi's body so quickly he found it dizzying to realize he could breathe freely again. "To lie. To tell falsehoods." 

Erwin beamed at him expectantly across the table, waiting for him to continue. 

"Did you mean it?" he blurted out. "What you were..." He trailed off, flapping a hand at Erwin to accompany the weak sort of ending. "What you were saying. About me. People don't usually say that." Keep the sentences short, terse. Small words. Good, that was good, Erwin didn't frown or look confused though he certainly had made it a point not to in the past. Levi could only hope he'd said everything correctly, and the words themselves had seemed fluid on his tongue instead of the barbs he'd been running himself ragged with for months now. "I'll do my best," he promised, sincerely. Heartfelt and hard felt. Erwin and I'll win. Yes, perhaps if you skewed the truth a tiny bit, it would be easier. Levi was already reaping the benefits.

 

-

 

They met once a week, then, twice. They were unlike any lessons Erwin had ever given. Fitting, then, because Levi was unlike any student he'd ever had.

The books were set aside completely in their first few meetings. Erwin made good on his promise and devoted these first sessions to guiding Levi into the mind of that singular creature, the testmaker. Where Erwin would once teach logical progression or cause and effect, now he tapped his network for the right industry contacts and coaxed them into calls to air every last one of their daily grievances – no one, Erwin explained, passed up an invitation to at once complain and to sing their own praises.

Truthfully, Erwin had no idea if it would work. He knew only that an unorthodox mind demanded unorthodox training, and this was as good a start as any. He had half a mind to ask how Levi braved the similarly narrow curriculum of middle and high school, what devices or coping mechanisms he might have used, but he held his tongue. Surely, Levi wouldn't keep something like that to himself if he sincerely wanted to pass this exam by all possible means, of which Erwin was sure he did. Besides, it wasn't Erwin's place one way or the other. He knew himself to be insufferable when his curiosity found a target, so he let the question go unasked.

Erwin hadn't expected Levi to catch on so quickly.

It must be that same quality of his that allowed him to effortlessly demand the respect of more than a dozen rowdy children who otherwise knew as much about calculus as they did about following directions, the same ability to notice the most seemingly innocuous things around him, including details he himself had entirely missed from their call with one of Erwin's contacts. After their first call, Levi put together from the man's self-described breakfast choices that he was waiting for something he both wanted and dreaded fiercely, something he'd always wanted but which now kept him up at night with anticipation. All this from slightly burned toast and a bowl of cereal.

Erwin let it go until their second call, when the man informed them, a little shaken, a little proud, that as of that morning, he was a father.

Translating his observations to the exam proper took a bit more work. Levi took to the role beautifully for the first few questions before he slipped into his own head for the remainder. It didn't matter how shortlived it was on that first attempt. It worked. Buoyed by the method's success, by Levi's success, however preliminary, Erwin took both his hands in his own and told him so, said to him that the exam was as good as aced, said it however many times it took for the frustration to ebb, for the lines in his face to soften, for the ends of his mouth to quirk the slightest bit skyward.

The hardest part was over. Now, it came down to endurance and focus, both learned with practice. They began to meet three times a week.

Levi made good on his promise to accompany him to his events and rallies to watch after Armin. Erwin's speeches improved. He was at once more nuanced and more daring, stepping even outside his district and not bothering to dispel growing rumors. The House, today. The Senate, tomorrow. The day after – one could only speculate. And there was plenty of that.

Mike caught Erwin as he left the green room of one of the network talk shows that were beginning to send him invitations, curious as to how some law professor was becoming this election's breakout star. Mike led Erwin aside.

“Malone knows,” Mike said.

Erwin said nothing for a moment. He sighed. “How?”

“Told us himself.”

“He what?”

“Couldn't believe it either. Sent a lackey to us while you were on air, told us he's offering a deal.”

“I can't wait to hear this.”

“Says he's willing to be quiet if you start canceling TV appearances.”

“Is that all?” Erwin asked wryly.

“Piece of work,” Mike agreed.

Nile must be good, Erwin thought. Malone would have replaced him otherwise, would not have bothered to associate with a campaign manager whose wife was the mother of his opponent's son.

“He's posturing,” Erwin decided. “He wants us to think this will bury us.”

“What are you thinking?”

“I think...” Erwin started, but his eye caught Armin from the open door to the studio lounge, sprawled across Levi like a gently dozing blanket. Levi's hand smoothed through his hair as his eyes darted across the pages of a review book in his other hand. Erwin's chest tightened. “Press conference. First thing tomorrow.”

Armin would need to know before then. Erwin would have to tell him tonight.


	12. Chapter 12

The sounds were working for him, the way they lingered echoes in his ears after Erwin said them, and Levi focused a good amount of his attentions towards trying to memorize the way Erwin's voice sounded, to ingrain it in his mind long after Erwin had already dropped him off in front of his house and he'd watched the cherry red taillights of Erwin's car disappear into the distance. He stayed by their rusting mailbox long after Erwin had already turned the corner, holding his breath and waiting, hoping, praying that his thoughts wouldn't be shattered by a screech of metal, the burning of brakes failing. The sounds never came, and bit by bit, Levi's racing heart slowed to a jog, a trot, a calm. 

Erwin's voice carried him over into his dreams, winding like golden threads around the words that were slowly starting to solidify into song. Levi woke with a smile on his face more often than not, almost in a good mood by the time he'd plucked himself out of the weak trickle of the shower, and his mother noted the change with alacrity. 

"That man is doing you a world of good, isn't he?" she asked him gently one sunny Saturday morning as Levi was whistling an aimless tune and getting ready to go and watch Armin for a bit while Erwin discussed some campaign things with his manager. He couldn't claim to understand the extent of Erwin's political prowess, but Armin never failed to assure him that his papa was doing great things and would make the world a good place for everyone to live in. 

"He is," Levi agreed, smiling at his mother. She was looking better, too, not quite so tired, not quite so disappointed in his small failures. 

"Your speaking is much better," she said, smiling back wearily. "I admit I had started to give up hope, but he did what no one else could. Must be made of magic, that one. I've seen his advertisements all around town recently. You can hardly go anywhere without seeing him smiling back at you. He seems nice," she finished, a veritable deluge of words breaking over the dam they had constructed between each other with missing language and misconstrued meanings, and much to his surprise, Levi found the underlying melodic rhythm of her voice as though it had never been lost, a bit subdued, a bit tucked away behind her syllables. He caught it, grabbed it, held on tightly. Understood. 

"He is nice," he agreed, feeding her lilt back to her one word at a time. The struggle was still there, he still had to fight back the urge to spout words he had only dreamed about saying or holding in his mouth, but slowly, slowly, with every passing meeting, he could feel the words crystallizing back into his brain as though they had never left. The accident was starting to fade into a distant memory, the scent of burning rubber and the sound of glass breaking no longer causing his heart to skip quite as many beats. "He is good for me. He is good to me." 

"He is," his mother agreed, her voice laid bare without any trace of worry, and Levi took the words with him as he walked out the door and towards the park where Erwin had agreed to meet him to hand over Armin. He had some sort of speech - exemplary examples of existing extraordinaires - this afternoon, a press conference about some as of yet undiscussed subject, and Levi was secretly hoping that perhaps he might be able to spirit Armin away from his excavations (another ex word! he could finally start to keep them straight in his mind!) in the sandbox long enough to get to a television set and watch hungrily for any bits and scraps of the live broadcast he could manage. 

The sun was bright outside, and birds were cooing softly to each other in the branches of the trees. Levi's feet carried him swiftly along the streets, the blocks melting away beneath his shoes. His burden had been lifted, he would be well again, and the tight white line of his wounds would become just that and nothing more. 

Erwin and Armin were already waiting on a wrought iron bench in the park when he got there, his eyes bright and cheeks slightly flushed from the warmth of the day. Armin looked a bit subdued, a bit more static than he had been in their previous meetings outside of school, and Levi picked up on it immediately. 

 

-

 

Armin bounced off the walls when they returned home from the talk show, bubbling over with admiration for the crew and the stage and all its flashing lights. Erwin hung his own coat and steadied Armin to unzip his jacket. Armin hopped onto the sofa and hummed the show's theme song until Erwin knelt to untie his little laces.

“What's wrong?” Armin asked suddenly.

Erwin froze, disarmed, before giving him a smile and a soft flick to his nose.

“Big day. Just a little tired,” Erwin said as he rose to put his shoes away and hang up Armin's jacket.

“But that's not your tired face.”

Erwin smiled more easily, then. He came back to sit at Armin's feet as they wagged and bounced. “Oh yeah? What does my tired face look like?”  
“Like this,” Armin said, and screwed up his face in a cartoonish pout.

“My own son wounds me,” Erwin bemoaned with both hands drawn dramatically to his own chest. Armin giggled before yawning broadly, sending Erwin's heart an express order to begin a jackhammer beat. Surely, he could wait until after the press conference. It was late, anyway. Surely there was no harm in waiting a little longer.

Or maybe there was. Maybe he had been wrong to keep his silence this far, for this long. He imagined the perfect age at which to have this discussion, imagined the ideal scenario – but there was none. There would never be a right time.

“Armin.”

Armin wiped his nose and blinked at him with owlish eyes.

“Do you- do your friends ever ask you about my work?”

“Uh-huh.”

“What sort of things do they ask?”

Armin frowned. “Just what you do. Why you talk so much.”

Erwin laughed. “Yes, I do talk a lot. I need to-”

“Make sure everyone can go to school,” Armin announced self-assuredly, “I know.”

Erwin ruffled his hair. “I know you know. See, there's another man. We're in a race- I mean, we're not actually running, we're-”

Armin sighed. “I know.”

Erwin patted his knee. “Just making sure. This man – he really wants to win.”

“Uh-huh.”

“He'll do anything to win. Say anything. Whether or not it's true.”

“That's not fair.”

“No,” Erwin said. “It's not. But he – he discovered something recently. Something I was hoping to – to keep between us. Something I was hoping I could tell you when you're a little older-”

“I'm older!”

Erwin smiled fleetingly. “That's right. Armin – it's always been the two of us.”

“What about Mike? And Mr. Levi?”

“Of course. What I mean is...” Erwin could hardly hear for his heart pounding in his ears. “...your friends at school, they have parents - fathers and mothers-”

“Not all of them,” Armin shrugged, and began to slump the way he did when he grew bored. “Lucy only has a mom. Jimmy has two.”

Erwin squeezed his knee. “That's right. It's different for everyone.”

Armin cocked his head sleepily, clearly not hearing anything he didn't already know. Erwin took his small hand in his own and kissed his knuckles.

“Marie,” Erwin said, “Your mother's name is Marie.”

 

*

Erwin stood to greet Levi as he approached them in the park. He looked good. Confident. So stunning was the difference between him now and that day he thanked him for the books, even the day he'd met him for lunch, that it pierced the miasma in Erwin's mind, reminded him that if he's had the slightest to do with this change in him, then even if last night opened an irreparable chasm between himself and his son, if this morning put an end to his campaign, he will have done something right.

As Erwin drove to the conference hall, he pulled out his phone. His thumb hovered over the text he had written in advance and, to his credit, he reread it only three times before sending it. It wasn't ideal, but a far sight better than the alternative. It wouldn't have been fair to Armin to talk about him as if he weren't there.

 

_Levi, I would be indebted to you if you kept Armin away from anywhere this press conference might air while you watch him. I can't in good conscience tell you to avoid it, too. I think I might even prefer that you see it, to understand who I am. Mike will meet you for Armin later today. I want to give you an opportunity to reexamine our arrangement. It's a joy to work with you, to watch you grow, but if you'll want nothing to do with me after this morning, I would never hold it against you._

 

*

 

The room was packed – Erwin even recognized a lackey or two of Malone's hovering in the back, phones out and ready, no doubt to spin his every word as quickly as their fingers could type. Erwin slipped into the next room where Mike was chatting up security. Seeing him, Mike shooed the guard and everyone else in the room out. Almost everyone.

Erwin smiled at her. It wasn't especially broad. But it wasn't fake.

“Hello, Marie.”

She rose from her seat and approached him, leaning in as he extended a hand, then switched to offer her own hand as Erwin changed to mimic her.

Mike huffed, amused, as he skimmed through Erwin's speech. “No, please, get the awkward vibes out now before the cameras are on.”

Erwin gave Mike a look before turning to Marie. “You're sure about this? I know it's last minute-”

“I want to do it.”

“Did Nile-”

“Don't. I'm his wife, Erwin, not his chess piece.”

Erwin laughed softly as Marie's eyes widened. “I'm sorry, I didn't mean-”

“No, no, I assumed, I should apologize.”

Marie's hands dug into her folded arms, and she shifted on her feet as her mouth opened and closed with aborted intent.

“He knows,” Erwin said. “He…I told him if he ever wanted to speak to you, to see you-”

Marie nodded. “Of course-”

“That it would take absolute precedence. If it meant canceling a speech, a meeting, losing the – the race. He's – he'll always be more important,” Erwin said, and he felt something like relief, relief at the state of his soul, when the words rang true to his own ear.

She nodded. “I hate this. Everything about this. Malone went behind our backs. I had no idea until you called. You have to believe me, Erwin-”

“I know. I didn't expect any less from him.”

“Still, Armin is so young...does he even understand-”

Erwin laughed softly. “He was quiet this morning, but last night…he told me not to worry. _He_ told _me_ it was going to be okay.”

Marie smiled fondly. “God...Erwin, if-”

“Time's up,” Mike interrupted with a clap. He turned to Erwin and handed him the short speech Erwin had sent him last night. “Short and sweet. Stay on message and keep your chins up,” he said as Erwin frowned at a sizable chunk that had been crossed out.

“Mike.”

Mike gave him a knowing look. “Don't. If you say that,” he said, tapping the crossed out text, “Malone drops out tomorrow.”

Marie's eyebrows rose. “Not to put my husband out of a job,” she said wryly, “but wouldn't you want that?”

“Sure,” Mike said, “If Erwin and everyone he's ever spoken to in his life had an army of Secret Service agents.”

Marie frowned. “What are you saying?”

Mike sighed and gave her a look that said he knew she knew exactly what he was saying.

Marie scoffed. “You can't be serious-”

“There's no time for this,” Mike said. “We can do the whole justifying working for a mobster thing later-”

“Mike,” Erwin said. “This will divert attention away from Armin.”

“At the cost of your life?” Mike turned on him. “Armin's?”

“Don't be dramatic.”

“You say that now, Erwin,” Mike said. He dragged his hands through his hair. “We promised not to use this.”

“Then why even have it?”

“Why does the president have the bomb?”

“ _Now_ you're being dramatic.”

“You-” Mike checked the time on his phone. “Shit. It's time. Go. And Erwin-”

Marie left to wait outside the room. Mike watched her go before turning to him, looking like he was ready to launch one last appeal before deflating visibly. Suddenly, he asked: “Where's Armin now?”

“With Levi.”

“ _Where?_ ”

“The park behind our building- Mike?”

Mike rushed to throw on his jacket and stuffed his things back into his bag. “We can laugh about my wild overreactions later, Erwin, and believe me, I can't wait to be proven wrong.”

 

Erwin walked with Marie to the press room. She pulled him to a stop just before it.

“Erwin-” she started.

“He won't lay a hand on you. Not on Nile. No one. I'll make sure of it.”

“That's what I'm afraid of.”

“This won't end like before-”

“Won't it? Isn't this just kicking another wasps' nest? I won't be around to pick up the pieces again, Erwin.”

“It won't come to that.”

“It won't be fair to Armin if you-”

Erwin raised his brows.

She sighed. “You're right. Not my place.”

Erwin didn't want it to end like this. More unsaid thoughts and unasked questions and what if's and if only's. The press was growing rowdy with anticipation.

“People have a right to the truth,” Erwin said. “This man lies and steals and cuts the kind of deals that'll make the CIA blush. If I can not only unseat him but put him behind bars where he belongs-”

“Is that worth looking over your shoulder for the rest of your life?”

Erwin didn't need to answer, and Marie didn't have to hear it to know what it would have been. The pair stepped into the room and said their prepared remarks. Erwin watched the room hovering at the edge of their chairs as they waited for the end of his own, waited to demand and insinuate and make a feast out of them in the news cycle for a week. Even revealing that Malone forced Erwin's hand wouldn't stop it. An unstoppable force needed an immovable object.

Erwin reached the end soon enough, taking a breath as the ink in the crossed out paragraph gleamed in the podium lights. The first chorus of _Mr. Smith_ 's began to vie for his attention.

“One last item,” Erwin said. Marie drew a sharp breath behind him. He turned to her and nodded, and with that, she took her leave. Erwin retrieved a tape recorder from his suit and angled the mic toward it.

“I believe in generosity,” Erwin said, “so I would like to thank Mr. Malone for his gift with one of my own.”

Erwin switched on the player. Static warbled through the otherwise silent hall. Soon, a pair of voices became discernible.

 

_“-fuckin' ivory tower prick-”_

_“Smith?”_

_“Who the fuck else? We gotta use our boys at the FEC to doctor mailers now, make sure all these newly registered's get the wrong date.”_

_“Aren't the ballot stuffers enough?”_

_“Not with Smith. Turnout's gonna be off the charts.”_

_“Kinda makes you wanna get rid of him the old fashioned way.”_

_“Nothing's off the table.”_

 

The tape stops, and the hall is silent. No movement. No rustling papers.

“A copy of this tape should be on the desk of police commissioner Pixis right about now,” Erwin said. “I suggest you defer to him for further details. Thank you.”

Erwin answered a handful of clumsy questions from the stricken reporters and directed them to the commissioner's scheduled news conference that same afternoon before leaving the hall. He got into his car and locked the doors before calling Mike.

He picked up. “We're at your place, chief.”

“Good,” Erwin said, trying not to sound too relieved. “Thank you.”

“Pixis sent over a few of his guys to stand watch. Shit. I didn't think you'd play the actual tape, Erwin. How the hell did you convince Pixis to let you do that?”

“I didn't. Pixis is a bit of an...exhibitionist.”

“No kidding. Okay. It's done. It's over. Now get over here so I can maim you myself.”

Erwin laughed softly, but he knew it would be more of a promise than a joke if Mike were a lesser man. Erwin would need to sit down with him and reexamine their strategy, put him at ease. Give him a way out if it came to that.

Just as he was about to say goodbye, he heard another distant voice on the other end.

“Is that one of the-” Erwin started.

“That was Levi.”

Erwin froze where he'd turned the key to start the car.

“Armin wanted him to stick around. Is that...”

“No, that's – that's fine,” Erwin said. “I'll be right there.”

In all the excitement, Erwin had doggedly assumed Levi would want nothing to do with him after that morning. Even if he had missed the press conference, there would be no way to miss the guards, no way not to piece together an idea of it all from Mike's end of the conversation. It was noble of him, to stay for Armin's sake even if it meant having to see Erwin again.

He found his door flanked by two officers. He nodded to each of them and thanked them for their assistance before placing a now-hesitant hand on the doorknob. He'd successfully alienated everyone behind this door – everyone, coincidentally, who he could conceivably trust after this morning – in less than an hour.


	13. Chapter 13

 

Levi had strategically waited until Armin had played himself sleepy. He'd made sure the little boy was comfortable on a wadded up blanket, the sunlight draping softly over his face and a little contented smile on his mouth, before he'd scooped him up and carried him softly through the door that led up to Erwin's place. The keys Erwin had entrusted him with jingled lightly in his pocket, and he shifted Armin's dead weight in his arms to get to them. They slotted easily into the locks, the tumblers clicking and churning quietly as they slid open, and he nudged his way inside, trying to ignore the curious, dead stares of the men clad in dark suits standing on either side of the door. 

He had guessed, he had thought, he had presumed. He had taken wild estimations of what Erwin might have possibly done to warrant this sort of behavior from third parties, but had never quite managed to work himself up to voicing it. The thoughts had run rampant through his mind, distracting him from the exams and the thoughts of the protagonists in the passages Erwin had him read. His scores were improving by leaps and bounds, and yet. 

Erwin had been more distracted as of late, and much like the fathers and friends in the reading comprehension passages, Levi had a sneaking suspicion that perhaps he might have a secret. Something that he didn't want anyone to know. Levi had been of the opinion that Armin might have known - there was something faraway in the little boy's expression, and his face took on more thoughtful, more adult expressions that looked somehow out of place on his smaller features - but he hadn't pressed the matter, and Armin hadn't offered him anything to allow for an opening move into a conversation. 

He found another man sitting inside, but that didn't surprise him. His name was Mike, or so Levi thought; their paths had crossed a few times in their separate encounters with Erwin. Circles of a Venn diagram meeting. It wasn't a test, though, and Mike patted at one of the plushy cushions of Erwin's sofa to indicate that Levi should put Armin down there. 

He did so, cautiously, smoothing a comforting hand over the boy's tousled blond curls before stepping back and folding his arms over his chest. 

"Erwin said you were brighter than you might appear," Mike proceeded, bluntly, without tact. Levi could appreciate it. Though he and Erwin had been working together on figurative language as of late, he still had yet to fully grasp the concept of metaphor and cloaking language in other words to make it sound better than the truth. "He said you might have already guessed what's going on. Out there." He waved one large hand vaguely towards the windows, slightly cracked; a mild breeze was sweeping through the opening, making the soft curtains flutter. 

Levi measured his words carefully. "I might have guessed," he agreed, softly so as not to wake Armin, and was glad that his syllables didn't stumble over each other, that he could understand everything. "I would like to conform." 

Mike raised a bushy eyebrow at him, but didn't say anything, nor did he try to stop Levi from reaching towards the black television remote lying innocuously on the coffee table. 

The press conference was the topic of every news channel Levi flickered across, and he hastily turned down the volume as Armin stirred in his slumber. The words of the closed captioning service ran harried ticker tapes down the bottom of the screen, and Levi's eyes flickered rapidly from left to right as he tried to jot down every word and commit it to memory. Erwin looked strained and wan, knuckles white as he clutched at the edges of the wooden podium, and Levi longed to reach out and perhaps soothe the stress out of him. It was the least he might be able to do, after Erwin had helped him so much, and he could hardly deny that he felt indebted. 

"I didn't know it was that serious," he said after a while. Mike watched him impassively. He swallowed roughly, the words feeling like broken glass in his throat. "I didn't realize there might have been a dearth of threats."

Mike frowned at him. A dearth of threats? Levi replayed it back in his mind, tasting the words on his tongue again. Dearth: a scarcity or lack. A dearth of threats. A lack of threats. The opposite of what he'd wanted to say, and he tried again. "I didn't realize there might have been a death threat." 

"A subtle one," Mike allowed, "but one all the same." 

They fell silent for a while, the only sounds in the room the slight buzzing of the static on the television screen and Armin's deep breathing. 

"Why you?" Mike eventually asked, clasping his hands together and leaning over, bracing his elbows on his knees as he looked up at Levi. "Why did he pick you?" 

"Pick me for what?" Levi asked, chewing at the inside of his cheek. He thought he knew exactly what Mike was asking, but didn't want to get the meaning wrong. Mike didn't know him nearly as well as Erwin did, didn't understand him; the disconnect showed in the way Mike's eyebrows furrowed whenever Levi transposed a word for another, or left out a string of words altogether. "For help?"

"Yeah," Mike agreed, his frown deepening. "Sure, I get that you're Armin's teacher in school. I suppose Armin's a big fan of you. Ah, what the hell," he muttered, leaning back against the back of the sofa, which creaked slightly under the sudden movement. "Erwin's always been one for charity cases, for fixing things that are broken."

Levi bristled at the implications. Thinly veiled ones. He understood Mike's meaning, crystal clear, and his fingers twitched into fists at his sides. 

"I wasn't always," he hissed, before he could stop himself. "Wasn't always broken." 

He opened his mouth to say more, to explain everything, but Mike waved a hand nonchalantly. "I know," he said gruffly. "We've already checked." 

There went his blank slate, cracking straight down the middle, and Levi felt an iciness swiftly seep into his soul. If Mike knew, then surely Erwin knew, and if Erwin knew, then perhaps he would start to question where that other Levi had gone. The one who'd loved to read, the one who'd gobbled down books like food, the one who'd been bound for a future filled with words and numbers and the golden paint of success. If Erwin knew, perhaps he was no longer satisfied with their arrangement. If Erwin knew, perhaps disillusionment and anger would soon follow.

Levi was spared the queasy thoughts that had taken up root at the forefront of his mind as the click of the locks in the front door began to turn, and his attention was drawn, fixed, to the door as it began to open. 

  


-

  


Mike was on him before he had even fully opened the door, and shepherded him into the kitchen before Erwin could catch more than a glimpse of Armin sleeping on the couch, or Levi beside him. He could tell Mike afforded him only that much before pushing him in earnest and shutting the door behind them. Mike uncapped a pen with his teeth and bent over a notebook on the kitchen table.

The two recorded Erwin's schedule in as much detail as they were able – personal and professional. Every outing, every grocery run, every step he takes outside.

“We'll update as we go,” Mike muttered as he took notes. “You can forget about going outside. Armin, too. First week's make or break. If they're gonna do something showy, they'll wanna do it now while everyone's still talking about it.”

“They won't.”

Mike looked up. “Erwin-”

“The tape isn't all of it.”

Mike leaned back and crossed his arms uncertainly. “...okay. Not that we need anything more. Malone's done.”

Erwin leaned forward. Mike did the same. “Not on Malone. He's a pretty face. He doesn't make the real calls, you know that.”

Mike's jaw worked. Erwin watched his thoughts war on his face. In the end, Mike shook his head with a tight smile. “This was never about Malone, was it? It's not even about the race.”

“We need to send out an email to our supporters and donors. Standard fare, explain the situation, what it means for the campaign and so on. And I want you to thank the U.S. attorney general in that email for her assistance in securing the tapes.”

Mike blinked. “The United States attorney general. Of the United States. The head of the Justice Department.”

“That's the one.”

“The DOJ- how did you even-”

“If Malone's bosses are given reason to suspect that I have the DOJ in my pocket, we're bulletproof.”

“Do you?”

“It's complicated.”

Mike pressed his mouth into a thin line. “Wow,” he said flatly.

“I've been building this case for as long as I can remember. If this works, we can clean out not just this district but the city. If I could tell you more, I would-”

“I get it. I do. Don't think I wasn't ready for this kinda thing when you called on me. Never could get out of people's business, could you?”

“Some businesses are more reputable than others.”

“You know, I'm not sure anymore if crooks are drawn to you or the other way 'round. And not to get all clairvoyant on you, but you keep playing this game and you're gonna be making a very hard choice very soon. Again. You know what I mean.”

“I know.”

“And Erwin,” Mike said, lowering his voice as Erwin moved to the door. “Dump the kid.”

“ _What_ -”

“I meant Levi.”

Erwin frowned. “He's not a kid-”

Mike shook his head impatiently. “Whatever. Get rid of him.”

“Is that your professional opinion?”

Mike got up. “He's a liability. You did your good deed, Samaritan, now let him go. Before you get to a point where you can't. Or worse. Where you don't want to.”

Erwin waited until Mike left the room before bristling belatedly at his warning, at this insinuation that Erwin wanted anything more of Levi than what they already had. He had no right to want anything, least of all from Levi.

When Erwin left the kitchen, Mike had gone. Levi and Armin, too. A flush of panic stopped him dead on his feet at the sight of the empty couch before Levi emerged soundlessly from Armin's room.

“Oh,” Erwin said as he peered past him at Armin lying swaddled in his bed. “Thank you.”

Levi nodded noncommittally, not looking him in the eye.

“I'm- I assume you've seen...seen more than enough,” Erwin said with a glance at the rapid-fire captioning on the near-muted television. I didn't want to warn you before, didn't want to frighten you for no reason. I'm sure Mike did his best at spooking you but I assure you, you're in no danger, no one is. I've made sure of it.”

Erwin took a seat on the couch and stopped just short of putting his head in his hands, mildly surprised that he'd even think to deflate like this in front of anyone. Maybe it wasn't right that he didn't feel that same need to pretend for Levi, to put on a show. That he was able to decompress so immediately when they would meet, that he could smile or laugh so freely again even at nothing at all. He'd done nothing to deserve that ease, that peace.

“But like I said in my message, if this is more than you're willing to put up with or – or if you feel unsafe, we can end the meetings, end all of it. I can recommend other tutors, though by now I'm sure it's you who could teach them a few things. Armin's school year will end in a month and then...you can forget all of it, if that's what you want.”

And if the speech sounded rehearsed, if it sounded like he'd given one like it before and its recipient had taken him up on his suggestion and made her own way without him, he hoped it wasn't too obvious.


	14. Chapter 14

 

"I won't be going anywhere," Levi said, sounding braver than he felt, his eyes flicking occasionally to the bedroom door Armin was safely ensconced behind. ensconced; it had a nice ring - to establish or settle someone into a comfortable, secure place, and how he longed for one now. The two syllables printed in large letters on the vocabulary cards he'd been making for himself couldn't quite capture that feeling. Lorem ipsum - pain itself, as Armin had painstakingly explained to him on a small PowerPoint presentation he had put together under Levi's supervision, for a small talk on the aquarium that Levi had long ago forgotten, it seemed so long ago. Lorem ipsum was filler text, and Levi's breath caught in his throat; suppose Erwin thought of him the same way, as filler text into the narrative that was his life? It would have been an apt metaphor, but Levi was far too caught up in the nuances of Erwin's speech that he could hardly force himself to take figures of speech into consideration.

"No, really, I won't," he insisted, frowning as he looked up at Erwin, but he couldn't help but hear how his voice sounded almost desperate, almost pleading. Erwin was in a difficult position here, he realized, and Levi was aware on some level that their associations with each other could ruin Erwin's campaign, could ruin everything they'd worked so hard to establish. "I know what it is. I know what it means." He was proud that his voice didn't stutter, didn't stumble over the words like they might once have when he'd been nervous. 

The television flickered static colors across the screen, but Levi refused to take his eyes off Erwin's face. He studied his expressions, the way his lips drew into a tight line, a pucker in the corner of his cheek, crows tracking thin sticked footprints through the fine skin at the corners of his eyes, and, see, he wanted to shout, he could do that too, he could make metaphors and love language and - 

No. He cut himself off. Erwin already knew about what had happened, he thought grimly to himself. Perhaps the superficial information found in Levi's public records and newspaper articles dating to around that time would make it abundantly clear that, somewhere along the line between the hospital and his return home, something in Levi had snapped. Something was irretrievable, and so far Erwin had had the patience to keep on looking for it, but, suppose that this was where his patience ran out. 

Suppose this was the end of the line, no more passengers? Suppose what Erwin was really saying was that he would, from now on, be far too busy for Levi, and it might be better to just excise him out of his life altogether? 

"Unless you want me to go," he added, after a long few moments of struggle. It took all his mental power to refrain from adding the words, 'I don't want to go.' "I would understand." 

There had been no stutters, and he almost had wished for one to appear, to prove that he was still in need of help. But it was just as well; as Erwin said, his position wasn't exactly one of the utmost importance, he was expendable, easily replaceable, and Armin only had another month of school left. There was no incentive for Erwin to keep him on. 

 

 

-

 

 

Maybe Erwin should have seen it coming. He had wished so much for Levi to take the out Erwin had given him that he'd convinced himself there was no way he wouldn't. No way he'd stick around when Levi had accomplished so much in so short a time and frankly, needed Erwin so little.

Erwin smiled thinly. “Maybe I should want you to go. Tell you to take stock of everything you've learned about me and get out now before you're wrapped up in something you never wanted to be in, something you never agreed to.”

The television static melded with the ringing in his ears. His elbows rested on his knees and he wrung his hands. “But I hate lying. To you most of all. It's not my place to make decisions for you, either. You- our meetings have grounded me more than anything in these months. Not just...not just working with you, not just watching you improve, but-” He looked down, and felt at once brave, at once like a coward. “-just talking to you, being with you, being away from the spotlight, being able to...” Hear the lilt of his voice when he read aloud. Laugh at his jokes, once tentative, now fired left and right, one as clever as the next one was raunchy. Hear wordplay that stunned Erwin, made him remark more than once that surely there was nothing more he could teach Levi, and meaning it every time.

Truthfully, he couldn't imagine what possessed Levi to stay even before the shakeup at the press conference that morning. Levi had been ready for weeks, more than ready. He had not just passed the practice exams Erwin had given him as they neared the date of the deciding one, but had scored leagues better each time. Another few weeks and he'll ace it outright. Another few weeks, and Erwin will need to forget how it feels to catch him smiling unaware, to watch his face twist and his mouth pout in concentration, to help him with his jacket as they leave the library and brush past his ears with his knuckles as he smoothed the fold in his collar.

“...to be myself. More of myself with you than, I think, anyone sees.” Erwin looked up. “No. I don't want you to go.”

 

-

 

 

The silence that fell between them was thick enough to cut with a knife, like a word phrase Levi had picked up handily only a few weeks ago. Or maybe he had relearned it, he'd known it before probably, and the words were finally starting to obey him again. Becoming friends. 

"That's good," he hedged carefully, his mouth dry and nervousness tickling at the back of his throat. "I don't really want to go." He couldn't even pin an excuse on the fact that he wasn't ready for the test; Erwin had made sure to offer him words of encouragement and praise after every practice exam they went through, saying how he was getting better all the time. 

He had a feeling that there was some sort of wistful longing, loneliness, that connected the two of them on a tenuous thread. A question nibbled at the back of his mind, wondering if maybe Erwin thought there was the potential for something special. Some sort of underlying feeling that he picked out from the subtext of their interactions that Erwin might not be able to read. 

"Do you...need me?" He asked, choosing his words carefully, just in case Erwin might take offense. He didn't know how else to say it, didn't know quite how to enunciate the subtleties of his thoughts. And yet he remained silent after the words had left him. He feared cheapening his question with any babbling and mistaken words that threatened to spill from the tip of his tongue. 

 

 

-

 

 

The question struck him cold. He hadn't thought of it in quite that way – hadn't allowed himself to – and now here it was, out in the air like a living thing that wilted with every second that passed with Erwin's voice trapped in his throat.

He couldn't do this. He couldn't do this to Levi. Not now. Not when he had plenty to worry about as it was without Erwin to complicate things.

Levi was choosing his words so carefully, he thought. His face was drawn tight in concentration, his brows drawn together and his mouth a little parted, uncertainty in every inch of him, in his face and in every stiff limb. He hated that Levi thought he needed to be so careful with him, so cold. As if a single misspoken word or a thousand could ever push Erwin away.

“I need...” Erwin started, but he too, felt that impulse to cut and curate his own tongue as if he were giving a lecture or presentation. He didn't want to feel that impulse now. He never wanted to feel it around Levi. “I don't need anything you're not willing to give,” he said. He laughed a little, shifted in his seat and looked away, willing the schoolboy flush out of his face. “Don't go worrying about me or what I want, Levi.” 

Then, out of his mouth before he could think to rein it in, could think to loosen the suffocating tension in the room, he snapped it still more taut and asked, “What do you want?”

 

-

 

 

What did he want, really? Many things, Levi thought to himself as his tongue grew thick and heavy with words that refused to come. He wanted his mother to stop looking at him with more than a hint of pity in her gaze, left over from his stint in the hospital; he wanted to be able to read a four hundred page novel without the words on page 73 turning to slush; he wanted Erwin to stay. 

"Stay." The word, a command, almost, bursting from him without further consideration. His face burned bright with something almost like shame, and his palms itched with nervousness. He was aware of how greedy and possibly desperate he sounded, and his mouth was running again despite his best efforts to keep it still. "Stay sterling stuttering starved stalks." 

He curled his fingers into a tight fist, concentrating hard on the sharp small pain of his nails leaving crescents in his skin, and turned his gaze away to look at the bedroom door that Armin was still sleeping behind. He couldn't bring himself to look at Erwin as he took a deep breath to recompose. 

"I would like you to stay." 


	15. Chapter 15

 

He said it so earnestly and so confidently that Erwin couldn't imagine he himself would ever want to do otherwise.

As Levi recovered, seemingly taken aback at his own answer, Erwin threw all his weight into resisting the urge to read anything more into the word than he had any right to, into ignoring the crescendo of impulses that begged him to tuck that strand of hair behind his ear, to smooth the lines in his brow with his thumb.

Erwin smiled, and he'd almost forgotten how one of those felt when they weren't forced. "I can do that," he said.

He checked in on Armin, looking to brush his hair out of his eyes, tuck him in tight or to bring a glass of water, but he'd been soundly beaten to it. Tucked in tight and murmuring softly in his sleep, Armin was out faster than he'd ever been after anyone but Erwin attempted to get him to sleep, and Erwin suffered that tightness again that rose in his chest whenever he saw how good Levi was with Armin, as if every time he refused to put two and two together, another stone clattered through his ribs and fell into his gut.

Levi watched them from the doorway. He moved aside as Erwin rose and shut the door softly behind him, and then they were alone and too far and too close and it felt like a weight lifting and another dropping and Erwin must have looked like he meant to speak because Levi was waiting and there was suddenly too little and too much he wanted to say.

"I don't think I can stand to do anything productive today," he said honestly. "If you - I know this is presumptuous, I'm sure you're busy...but if not, we can catch up on that reading we missed. If you'd like." 

More and more of their meetings ended with Erwin simply reading to him, or Levi reading to Erwin, and he was beginning to grow tired of pretending it wasn't his favorite part of their lessons. And maybe some light reading would temper the trembling in his hands he tried valiantly to hide ever since the press conference. 

 

-

 

Still trying to get over his abrupt forwardness, Levi could barely bring himself to nod, following Erwin as the other man made his way to the kitchen table. The surface was slightly sticky under Levi's palms, scattered with crumbs and documents and half eaten pieces of toast, and it was all he could do to keep from grimacing as he sat down next to Erwin, who cleared a small place among the mess absentmindedly. 

He read the sentence that Erwin was reading aloud, committing the sound of the syllables to his memory. Melodic. Mnemonic. His attention started to wander, preoccupied with the rigid way Erwin was holding himself, the distracting few centimeters or so of space that separated their hands and arms. 

He wanted Erwin to stay, and yet now that he had, Levi was confused about the subtext of the scene. There was a quality of yearning about it, of longing, but he wasn't sure if Erwin could feel it too. According to him, Levi had an uncanny ability of reading into the depths of a scene and acting upon it in ways not immediately apparent to others. 

He took a deep breath, another, his eyes skipping over the lines and his mind hurrying away from the looming date of his upcoming exam, and tried desperately to ignore the way the centimeters between them began slowly but surely to diminish. 

 

-

 

They moved their chairs together at the table. Sunlight splashed lazy across the pages of the book. Erwin hadn't so much as glanced at it before picking it out, barely registered a word even as he read them. He needed to get out of his head. He needed to slow the torrent of what-ifs clouding his mind ever since the conference. He should probably be preparing. Making a call or twenty. But not now. He couldn't do it now. He needed to calm down. His hands hadn't lost their tremor, still. His voice had just begun to plaster itself back together from its splintered pieces. He was good at rescheduling fear.

Levi was warm beside him, radiating heat like a furnace. He'd tucked his legs beneath him and leaned over to read the lines on the page as Erwin spoke them aloud. Without much thought, Erwin moved the arm closest to Levi behind them to rest on the back of his chair, and then angled the book in his direction, yet still Levi leaned closer, undemanding yet all-too-present, an almost-weight against his side that, despite how much of it now threatened to break his back, this weight, alone, he wanted, and so gentle was the revelation that it took no thought at all to let Levi's hair fan across his chest, to let him press his head against Erwin's heart.

  
-

 

Erwin smelled like starch and lavender laundry detergent first, and some pleasantly understated cologne second. His heartbeat pulsed rhythmic against Levi's cheek, nudging out a cadence of assurance and comfort that Levi found irresistible. 

His face flamed, heat flushing across his skin, and his mouth started fumbling over words that his mind processed and scrapped almost immediately. His concentration was all but shot, and he knew that whatever attempts he made to keep up this facade of studying would be futile. The only thing that kept him from pressing himself closer was the knowledge that Armin was sleeping just in the next room, and he was still considered pure and unattached to him, or at least he thought so. Something with Erwin would certainly complicate matters, but Levi himself could hardly deny the pressing attraction that swept through him with every passing second. 

"Is this what love is like?" The man in the passage was asking of a woman he had just met over the course of some speed dating event or another. Levi read it aloud. Swallowed. Read it again, holding his breath As he turned a fraction of a centimeter after another fraction until he could make out the contours of Erwin's profile, backlit with the soft glow of late afternoon sun. 

"Is it?" he asked, almost breathless and hoping against hope that Erwin's answer would settle his nerves to rest. 

 

-

 

Erwin wouldn't have let go of that book had all the world clamored for him to put it down. The distraction of reading was mercifully keeping his heart at its steady beat as the seconds passed by and the man curled into the crook of his arm not only remained there but made himself comfortable. Erwin gripped the back of Levi's chair to resist the urge to wrap his arm around him.

Occasionally, Levi stopped him and read aloud a line or a paragraph, drawn as he was to the fluid lyricism of certain lines and the staccato beats of others. Sometimes, he amended passages as he read them, replacing clunky words for graceful ones or changing the narrative entirely. After Levi had proven himself able to resist the temptation to reimagine the droll, state-approved exam passages, Erwin gave him free reign to do whatever he wished with them when they read aloud - no harm done since the exercise was more concerned with improving his speech and enunciation than his ability to observe and analyze to the standards of the exam. 

But Erwin was halfway through the next sentence when he realized Levi was rereading the one before, once, under his breath, not even stopping Erwin this time as if he hadn't realized he had done so, then again with more conviction.

Levi turned just so until the afternoon light burned the pitch of his hair and lit the curve of his nose, and he asked in two words a question that was perfectly logical and yet one that begged to be scrutinized and read into until the sun flickered out.

Erwin quieted that urge, too. It wasn't his place. It wasn't the time. Levi wanted an honest answer to an honest question. Nothing more. Erwin could at least try to remain professional. 

"The man seems to think so. The woman doesn't answer for at least a page. Maybe she isn't sure, maybe- and they've only just met, but-" Erwin stopped. He was rambling. 

"It can be."

 

-

  
Levi's heart skipped a beat, and his tongue felt thick and heavy in his mouth, slow to wrap around any and all of the words he wanted to say. 

The woman didn't answer for at least a page, at least a column in the fragmented indentation of the recyclable paper print, and even then her answer was somewhat overshadowed by the undertones of uncertainty that ran through the passage. This very same uncertainty led Levi's mind in circles, and Erwin's equally ambiguous response wasn't helping. 

He swallowed again, his breath sounding harsh and raspy in his lungs. He hoped Erwin couldn't hear his nervousness. 

"I think it is," he dared to say. Ventured. Tried. Attempted. His words were sticking in his throat, and his pulse was pounding in his ears. He swore he could hear Armin rustling awake in the next room, and he struggled to get the words out as quickly as possible. 

"I think I would like to see if it is," he started, bravely, then faltered, dropping his gaze quickly back to the page and feigning a studied interest in the words that had become swimming serpents of ink. "I would like to try. Would you?" He was quite aware of the fact that his words had become stilted, that his vocabulary and sentence structure had reverted back to its former rigid simplicity. Monosyllabic. 

He dared to hope for a yes. The audacity. Levi tried to focus on breathing, ragged small gasps, as the words swum in and out of focus on the page. 

 


	16. Chapter 16

 

Levi couldn't see him from where his hair tickled his chin so Erwin allowed himself to shut his eyes from the feeling of all the titanic weight of all his excuses crumbling away one by one. He couldn't imagine how Levi could have been any clearer. He couldn't imagine a single misplaced or missing word that might have illuminated his feelings an ounce more and it hurt him, it hurt from the ends of his fingers to the cavern in his chest that Levi was so certain while Erwin hedged and hedged and hedged until there was no way to have it both ways anymore.

Erwin let go of the back of Levi's chair. His fingers had gone stiff from how he'd gripped it. Levi's hair grazed his open palm and he chased the feeling until the hairs at his shorn nape yielded to the nails he grazed across it before he cupped the back of his head and pressed his lips to the crown of his hair and then to his forehead and then to his temple.

Against his temple, Erwin murmured, “Not if it's a distraction,” he said as he grazed his fingers across his nape. “Not if I'm a distraction.” He moved his hand to Levi's shoulder, thumb grazing the join of his shoulder and neck. He forced it out. He should have said it long ago. “You'll ace this exam. You'll enter a university. You'll find someone exciting, someone young. Someone who can give you all of themselves. Not just the pieces left over. You deserve more than an old man with more enemies than he can-”

“Papa.”

Erwin looked up. He smiled despite the weight in his throat, smiled as Armin rubbed his eyes in the threshold of the kitchen. He drew away from Levi, stifling a shiver at the cold air come to claim the warmth the man left behind, and rose to come to Armin and lift him in his arms. The boy whined sleepily when Erwin kissed his ear.

This was good. Between Armin and the campaign and Malone, Erwin barely had time in the day for himself, let alone anyone else. Anything they may have tried would have been crippled and conditional from the very start. Levi deserved better. This was better. This had to be better.

Armin grumbled when Erwin put him down. Levi wasn't looking at him. Erwin couldn't read his face.

 

-

 

 

The inside of Levi's cheek felt all but shredded from the way he'd worried at the tissue with the tips of his teeth. Erwin's lips had left the very memory of searing warmth burnt into his skin, and he wanted to feel it, to taste it. The vicious sort of want that peeled through him at Erwin's kiss faded away almost as quickly as Armin came toddling into the room, rubbing at his eyes and yawning innocently. 

Surely Armin didn't need that sort of confusion in his young life, Levi thought almost distractedly to himself as he quickly dislodged himself from Erwin's grasp and tried quickly to compose himself. Surely it would be better if perhaps nothing came of this? 

"I don't want someone younger," he breathed, his eyes skipping distractedly over the page. "I don't want that." His words came gritted out, harsher than he'd meant them to be, and he cleared his throat as he struggled for the right words again. Armin wandered off to the small kitchen after some gentle prompting to go get himself a snack, and the tension in Levi's lungs eased. He took one deep breath. Another. The afternoon sunlight spilled through the room and illuminated the swirling dust motes in the air over the pages of the book still lying open between them on the table. 

"Distract me," he tried, but the commanding tone he'd attempted to adopt fell flat and came out as a quivering sort of question instead. 

Erwin remained silent for another moment, and Levi hastened to backtrack, in case he'd said something wrong. "Unless you would rather not be, but I'm inclined to feel a little shellfish." He bit his tongue at the slip, and dropped his gaze back to the recyclable newsprint pages, waiting for some sort of answer. Some ridicule, perhaps. Maybe a gentle letdown, an explanation of why Erwin would be unable to take him up on his thinly veiled offer. At this point, Levi was unsure which would be worse. 

 

-

 

 

Erwin didn't know what sort of resistance he expected, but it was nothing like this. Unapologetic. Uncompromising. If he had ever imagined that he was a passing fancy, a brief blip on the man's radar, the thought was dashed now. He wracked his mind over how this could have happened. What he could have done differently. 

He shouldn't have confided in him. Shouldn't have kissed him. It just came to him, overtook him, had seemed like such a natural thing to do. Shame lit in his chest at the idea of having lead him on with this parade of oversights. Erwin was going to be put to the microscope whether or not he wins - and all signs point to a victory, with Malone's inevitable drop. He couldn't subject Levi to that caliber of naked and unabashed public scrutiny.

Erwin fell to one knee and took one of Levi's hands in both his own.

"Put the exam behind you," he said. "By then, I'll also know where I stand with Malone and his men. Then..."

He stroked his knuckles. A scar coiled around his palm. Erwin ran his thumb over it.

"Levi, the House will demand everything of me. And I won't give them any less than my best. My constituents deserve nothing less. Education reform is...its a tall order. Unless you- unless you'd sincerely want to be a part of that, I can't make you a promise I know I can't keep. I won't do that to you."

"After the exam," he said. "And then we...then."

 

-

 

 

"And then." It sounded ominous, a sort of cliffhanger, perhaps, but Levi could sense a faint tinge of hopefulness. Of exploration. The meanings of scenarios and conversations, as Erwin had told him time and time again, was not what the characters said, but what they didn't say. 

"And then," Levi agreed, studying the way the sunlight threaded through Erwin's golden hair and wondering idly if his hand would be burned from the flush running through him. "Education reform, and then." His thoughts had fallen out of order. "And then what?" he wanted to know. "It's good in theory, but putting it into practice is something else entirely." 

Erwin's face fell with his musings, and Levi hastened to amend his statements. "Not that I'm saying it's bad," he mumbled. "But..." His voice trailed off, and he cleared his throat, trying to grasp for any last vestiges of strength to imbue his words with. "But I can make the promise. To help. To be...part of whatever it is that it might be. If you would let me." He gestured aimlessly over the table; the well used study books had already started to ruffle shut, and Levi could all but taste the lovely feeling of pride and excitement when the printout with his exam results was passed across the laminate counter into his hands. 

Yes. And then. 

 

-

 

“I'd like that,” Erwin said.

They considered finishing the text, but there was a futility about it. Levi had long since guessed at the twist ending and reworked the characters' arcs into arresting subversions of their first incarnations, but that wasn't all why it felt like a bridge already passed, like reality had been deeply altered between the first sentence and its last.

Erwin walked him to the door.

“You'll ace it. I believe it. You've grown so much. I want to tell you now because we- we may not see each other again before the exam,” Erwin said, and went on before the confusion on the man's brow deepened. “I've made some people very angry today. I may even need to pull Armin out of class and send him to stay with relatives until the dust clears. I want the attention of these men on me and me alone. Not on Armin. And never on you. Hopefully, it won't take long to smoke them out.” 

He sighed and tried for a lighter tone, at once far too aware of how long it could be before he would see Levi again, at once far too reluctant to let him go.

“I'll try to call the night before, if you'd like. Last minute...” He licked his lips. He swallowed thickly. “tips or...or encouragement...”

 

-

 

His footsteps clicked down the stairs, the sidewalk, and he turned to find Erwin leaning against the door jamb, looking after him. Looking out for him. Levi had a sudden urge to run back and - and what? Fling himself into Erwin's arms, scattering his books and pencils over the ground? 

It would be like a filler scene in a romantic movie. It would be sappy and glorious and Levi could feel his body itching to wrap itself around Erwin's and not let go. 

But no, not yet. The implications of something like that might be too great for right now, and Levi was well aware of how much Erwin's reputation needed to remain as intact as possible. He couldn't risk jeopardizing it when the potential for greater rewards still remained a promise on the distant horizon of the future. 

He allowed himself another smile and a vague wave goodbye - no, a promise to see him again soon - before turning and leaving. His shadow lengthened and painted the sides of passing buildings with dusky black, but the world had been illuminated for him. 

He would pass. He would read novels of hundreds of words and thousands of pages again. He and Erwin would - well, they would be something, or so he sorely hoped. All it asked of him was patience, and Levi had that in spades. 

 


	17. Chapter 17

Mike called it a deep clean.  

Erwin knew why it was necessary. He initiated it himself. Scrub all public and private records clean. Render all of Erwin's closest friends and contacts nonexistent to the discerning eye. 

With the cooperation of commissioner Pixis, the city caught dozens of high-ranking operatives in the following weeks. The parasitic dynasty that throttled the city's municipal underbelly sprouted a new Malone every few summers to take the place of their old above-ground puppet. No one had been able to pull the system out by the root before. Pixis was more than thrilled. Erwin and Mike had half a dozen society invitations between them before the end of the first week. 

Armin was pulled from school as well as, with the commissioner's authorization, all written and videotaped records of him andErwin ever being there. Meanwhile, fabricated records and tapes were installed into three different schools and their administrators given explicit direction to notify them should anyone come digging. Armin himself was sent to stay with Mike's aunt - a more than decent woman, by Erwin's measure, if not a little odd for her fixation for egret-themed clothing and paraphernalia. 

The commissioner's aid and cooperation were generous.  In his three decades on the force attempting to stir the very nest Erwin had just kicked, nothing, he said to Erwin, gave him more pleasure than to see those untouchable faces march before the same judges they once threatened, once bribed, once blackmailed.

But Malone's kind didn't key cars or send ominous letters through the post. Despite their crowning mistake in allowing evidence of their extralegal electioneering to fall into Erwin's hands, they were not stupid, and they were not impatient. This single error of hubris was Erwin's chance to pull the rot out with the roots, but it was his only chance. Pixis was content with prison time. Erwin wasn't. Expensive men in expensive suits with expensive legal teams were held by bars as successfully as netting held oil. Erwin had to be sure they could never do business in this city again, sure that they would never be taken seriously ever again. 

Mike drip-fed their sordid business dealings to the press. He angered them, because angry men weren't careful men, and when more details were born of their incensed carelessness, the cycle continued. Bars aren't nearly as effective as humiliation.

It was quiet without Armin. Erwin returned his library books.

He would need to move every few days to agreed-upon safe houses. He could contact Armin in one month, visit him in two. He'd long since sold his car, scrubbed his phone records, and exchanged his smartphone for an older model that was more difficult to track. Six months of this, Mike said, and only if they were supernaturally lucky. They couldn't let a single one of Malone's men to escape and start again. Couldn't let them even consider coming close to Erwin.

Erwin didn't ask if it was overkill. Mike, and his second, Nanaba, had served in Securities Industries prior to entering the arena of political campaigns. Him, informational and biometric; her, physical and engineering. If they said jump, Erwin asked how high.

Malone had dropped out immediately, and in the following days, had been taken into custody in connection to the contents of the audio Erwin had played at the presser. Erwin, already leading in the polls prior to the mess, soared in the weeks after.Malone was gone. The election next week was a formality. Erwin was a United States Representative. The words were foreign to him in his own head.

It was a dreary, rainy evening when Erwin took a packed train downtown. He hid his face with a newspaper, and outside, with an umbrella. He kept to busy streets. Ideally, he'd have a security detail, but he wasn't interested in divulging why he was dialing a number on a burner phone in the middle of a street he never frequented on an evening that seemed like any other.

He started and stopped dialing many times. More than he cared to count. He'd tucked away this part of his life well. It shouldn't be worth it to open this door again when it took all his willpower to close it, all his strength to lock it. Thoughts of this day shouldn't have been the last thing on his mind before he closed his eyes, the first thing he remembers when he opened them.

Nor did he know how many evenings like this he could steal again. He was not his own man anymore. He had constituents now. He existed outside his own selfish desires.

But not for another week.

Erwin thumbed at the disposable phone as crowds milled past. Their chatter was not too low, not too high. People were leaving their offices and going home. Getting something to eat. Going out with a friend. Studying for a morning exam. Erwin dialed and disappeared into the next wave.

He nearly stopped at the sound of that first, hesitant hello – the number was unfamiliar, after all. His chest ached.

“Hi, Levi,” he said. “It's Erwin.”

 

-

 

Levi wouldn't deny that he missed Erwin, and Armin by extension. The boy had been pulled from his class, and though he'd been expecting it, and had even gone so far as to sit down a bit more with Eren to try and console him, but neither his nor Eren's hearts were really in it. The classroom seemed duller, dimmer, a little more subdued. 

He studied a bit in the evenings, but, thanks to their practices, Levi began to discover books again. Their words danced through his mind; short stories with big text first, then small novellas. Then novels. He had missed the sturdy weight of a hardback in his hands, stuffed into his bag, words pressed all against his back as his footprints grew thick between his house and school, school and the library, the library and home. Kuchel's eyes had brightened too, her smile lifting the corners of her eyes more often than not, and Levi felt the clouds dispersing into harmless mist. 

Granted, a sense of nervousness and mild anxiety simmered gently inside him as the exam date approached. It no longer felt hopeless, no longer had the capacity to utterly defeat him. But it still didn't stop him from missing the practice sessions and the way Erwin's body had started to gravitate towards his own. 

He was curled up in a wicker chair in his room, straining his eyes to amble over the text in a Haruki Murakami novel and absorb the story through a stream of consciousness when his phone vibrated on his desk. His mother was downstairs, singing quietly to herself while the warm smell of spaghetti sauce filtered through the air. Levi reached over for his phone, setting the book down on the edge of his desk. 1Q84, the cover read. A story about things that weren't exactly as it seemed. Levi remembered reading it before the accident that had taken the words right out of him, and finding the ability to read it again was like discovering another whole parallel universe for himself. A love story to span the universes of space and time. 

The number came up wasn't stored in his phone, and he hesitated a few moments before answering. It might have been someone from the testing board, after all, trying to reach out and inform him of perhaps a change in venue or something administrative like that. 

Much to his surprise, Erwin's warm voice filtered over the phone, slightly staticky. His heart skipped a beat, and his mouth grew dry. A jolt wrenched through him, the world shifting a degree as he tried to come to terms with the new reality that Erwin had just (re)introduced to him. 

"Oh, hello," he managed to say, swallowing roughly and trying to suppress the urge to blurt out that he missed him. Desperately. Frighteningly. The absence of Erwin and his son was almost crushing. "I haven't heard from you in a while." Quick. Think. Not admonishing, but not aloof either. Large words, but use simple ones. "How have you been? How is Armin? Your campaign?" He was proud of himself for not stumbling. 


	18. Chapter 18

Erwin clapped his hand over his mouth before he could laugh openly at hearing his voice. The impulse unnerved him, it, and the crushing tension in his chest that he refused to name. He forced himself to stride at an easy, even pace. 

"Good. Good - everything's-" he stopped himself before he repeated it a third time. "Difficult. But that's alright," he added, and with a bravado he didn't feel, said, "It wouldn't be all that fair to everyone else, otherwise."

He didn't say how the imposed isolation maddened him, didn't say how he missed speaking to someone, anyone, who wasn't bound to the political rat race. 

"Promise not to tell Mike I called," Erwin joked instead. "I appreciate his vigilance, but I think he forgets that I know how to be careful." 

Cars rushed past and scattered still pools in cracked concrete. "Armin is with relatives. He misses you and Eren, but he never once complained. I hate putting him through all this. Sometimes, I wish-" He didn't finish. 

He wished for him a better father, a more attentive father. 

Erwin waited for the light to change. A woman waited nearby with a stroller.

"Anyway. Votes are cast in a week. Not much of a nail-biter if one contender is facing trial in lockup. It's all very anticlimactic," he said, and lifted his umbrella to make room for another passing the opposite way, "but I can't tell you how much I prefer it over another spectacle."

Erwin kept to busy streets and wondered if Levi had been studying, wondered if his hair was wild from having run his hands through it as he so often did when a practice question gave him grief. 

"But enough of that. I have one last assignment for you, Levi. It's of infinite importance. Are you ready?"

 

* * *

 

Levi could hear the wistfulness in his voice, and the thought that Erwin might be missing him sent an almost queasy feeling to the pit of his belly. He swallowed, staring hard at the wall in front of him. It had posters from a simpler time, an easier time, but the colors were faded from the sunlight and the corners were curling up, grey poster tacky sticking to the underside of the glossy paper. They were some band he'd used to listen to, The Kooks, but he hadn't listened to one of their songs in a while. Too many words and too many meanings, though he wondered if that was still true now.

From what Erwin was saying, it sounded like everything was going according to plan. The bits and pieces were slowly falling into place, and Levi could only hope that somewhere would be a little corner that he could squeeze into, that would be just right for him. 

"I am more than ready," he said, once he was sure his voice wouldn't crack or wobble. "I am listening." He had so many more questions to ask, like when he might see Armin again. That, and... 

Well. Was Erwin sleeping enough? Was he sleeping too much? Was his hair ruffled from too many nights running his hands through it over and over again as he fretted over the Neverending mess of minutiae that threatened to overwhelm him? Was he feeling overwhelmed? 

All these questions and no time to ask them. They threatened to bubble out of Levi at the nearest opportunity, but he waited with bated breath for whatever Erwin might have in store for him. 

 

* * *

 

His heart coiled at the naked sincerity in Levi's voice.

Erwin cleared his throat. "Your final task-"

The next few months flashed by him, unbidden. The real work began in earnest soon. Meeting with state and congressional legislature. Vetting staff. Donor hunting. Drafting his reforms with House colleagues. Opening the D.C. office. Preparing Armin for kindergarten. Finding an overnight sitter for the four days out of each week that he'd need to spend in D.C. before returning home. On top of which, even without their current security measures, it would be weeks if not months before he and Levi could catch up in earnest. People change in far less time. Phone calls won't be enough. Even this one, a joy though it is, isn't nearly enough. People move on in far less time. 

Or maybe it was too early to say. Maybe there was something to taking it one day at a time. One night at a time.

"-is to get a good night's sleep."

 

* * *

 

Levi could hardly keep himself from bursting out into laughter. Sleep? Sleep would come easy, now that he'd heard Erwin's voice and assured himself that Erwin didn't sound one hairline fracture away from breaking. Not even the promise of the test tomorrow, with all its words and questions and tricks to trip him up, could erase the giddy feeling of happiness bubbling in his chest. 

"I think I can do that," he promised, grinning so hard his cheeks were starting to hurt. 

A soft silence passed between them. Levi scrambled for something to say, wanting to keep Erwin on the line just a bit longer. 

"Do you -" he began, before cutting himself off and wondering if perhaps it wasn't just a bit presumptuous. Erwin didn't say anything, waiting with bated breath. Well. Levi had never exactly been the most subtle person, and there was no reason to start now. "Can I call you tomorrow? Afterwards?"

 


	19. Chapter 19

Yes. God, how he wanted to say yes. It should have been the simplest thing. But simple things were for simple times. 

"I'd love nothing more," Erwin said honestly, "but not so soon. Even with the precautions I'm taking, reaching out like this is a risk to you." He resisted the urge to look over his shoulder, though his stride through the cramped streets quickened. He was beginning to see things, fleeting things. Faces in a crowd that might be familiar, might not be. He'd left his own phone at home to avoid being tracked, sure that this wouldn't take long. Now, it occurred to him that he wasn't sure how much time had passed. It surged along like the still-racing rain.

"But this is what I would say tomorrow, regardless. I am so, so proud of you. Your insights may make people fear or distrust you, but you must be patient with them. They're the ones catching up to you. Not the other way around."

Erwin delayed, and maybe he wasn't imagining that Levi, too, was reluctant to go, but the call had to come to an end.

He took the subway home, made anonymous by the density of the rush hour car. A pair of undergraduates lamented their workload across from him and shook the rain out of their hair and onto the book of their irritated neighbor. Somewhere, a child started hiccuping.

His front door shut with a soft click. Every so often, he was allowed to return to his flat to test the waters. That, and Erwin insisted they need not inflate Malone's ego any more by having Erwin hop from one safe house to another indefinitely.

Erwin shrugged off his damp coat and looked for his phone, bracing for the volume of missed calls waiting for him and preparing his excuses. He found it on the kitchen counter where he left it, face-down. He turned it over.

Nothing.

Now, his skin crawled for another reason entirely. He'd been gone for hours, and told anyone who needed him that he was out running errands. But there were always missed calls. Staff that needed guidance. Officials and colleagues in need of his ear. A knock on the door halted his thoughts.

A look through the peephole revealed no one, and nothing. Movement by his feet caught his eye. Someone had slipped a piece of paper under the door.

On it was Levi's name, address, and enough personal and financial information to make anyone miserable for the rest of their lives. 

Erwin swung open his door and flew down the steps. He checked every floor, chest heaving with exertion. Whoever had slipped him the page was gone.

He returned to his flat, slammed the door, picked up his phone and dialed. So violent was the ringing in his own ears that Mike must have been on his third or fourth "hello?" before Erwin could work his throat. 

"Hey, Mike."

"Something wrong?"

"No. Yes. I mean-" Erwin rubbed his hand over his face and took in a haggard breath. 

"Hey," Mike said. "Talk to me."

Erwin relayed the development as clearly and succinctly as his bludgeoning heart allowed. He hadn't moved from where he'd propped his back against his front door, unable both to stand on his own nor walk to any seat with his failing legs. He listened to the noises of neighbors and loose faucets and his own uneven breaths as he waited for Mike's answer.

"Huh," Mike finally said. "Tough one."

Erwin swallowed his indignation. Mike didn't sound nearly as alarmed as he should be. "Any ideas?"

"Well, you're right. Chances are, they'll be in touch again soon, bring demands, and so on. I'll send a guy or two to watch Levi's place, but there isn't much more we can do at this point. Better sleep on it."

Erwin couldn't believe what he was hearing. "Sleep on it. I can't believe what I'm hearing. You're not taking this nearly as seriously as you should."

"What would you have me do, Erwin?" Mike sighed. "When's the last you've heard from him?"

"Levi?"

"Yeah."

"Last month, at the presser," Erwin lied. 

Mike thought for a moment. "We can't go to the Feds with this. Can't storm the enemy castle without a warrant either. ID'ing the guy who left the note would be pointless. He's just a courier."

"We can gather intel on their men-"

"And do what with it? Threaten one of theirs in return? Think they'll care that we snag some third tier goon? Think they won't go to Pixis with our threat and raise a national stink for your prosecution?"

Now Mike was talking too much. Erwin heard every other word if he was lucky, otherwise every third or fourth. Soon, the line went silent, but Erwin couldn't think of a thing to say.

"Hey," Mike said softly.

Erwin had half a mind to hang up. A palpable exhaustion dropped on his shoulders. He didn't remember when he'd slid down the door. 

"Erwin. What else is on the paper?"

Erwin groused that he'd already told him everything there was to know, but he looked again. The information was typed on a blank letter page, folded once. Erwin scanned both sides, then the edges for residue of any kind, though none was there. 

"I guess if there's nothing else-"

"Wait," Erwin said. "I- we spoke. once."

"When?"

Erwin ran a finger over the text. "Today."

"Ah."

"I took every precaution. I did everything right."

"Erwin-"

Erwin's indignation rose. "I still can't see why we can't offer him a staff position. We could keep an eye on him ourselves, and he's more than qualified. You underestimate him.  You and everyone else always-"

"Hey-"

"Wait," Erwin said. He ran his finger over the text again. At first, he thought it was simply raised from the page, but that couldn't be it. Not every letter was raised, and those that were, were uneven. When he shut his eyes, focused only on his touch, and ran his finger over it again, he found not letters but numbers. Something was raised on top of the flat text. He read them aloud to Mike. 

"Sounds like coordinates."

They were.

"Look up-"

But Erwin was already halfway through pounding the numbers into his laptop. Thankfully, it wasn't encoded, though the relief was short-lived when Erwin considered that he would never have thought Malone's men to go to so much trouble only to forgo such a simple additional precaution.

Erwin stopped. This entire display was a hair too sophisticated for Malone's taste. Before he could give it more thought, the search led him to a pub - in Ireland. A bar named Five Dames. Fury pooled in his gut. 

"Now, Erwin-" Erwin didn't hear the rest.

He pounded on Hange's door. On 5D.

Hange opened. "Oh, hey-"

"Where is he?" Erwin looked past his neighbor. Mike waved to him from the sofa.

"He put you up to this?" He asked Hange.

"Just wanted to stay somewhere he knew you wouldn't strangle him. You're too polite, Mr. Smith."

"A fatal flaw," Erwin said to them, though he only had eyes for Mike. "I hope you were compensated very well."

"Yep. Although..." Hange looked him up and down as Mike began to look uneasy. "Look at that, I just remembered my Strangling Fee-"

Mike rose and cleared out. "Not necessary, Hange, " he said quickly, "thanks for everything, good luck with your research."

"Wait! A  _discount_ on my Str-"

"No thank you," Mike said as he dragged Erwin back into his flat and shut the door behind them. 

Mike opened a window and shoved a cigarette between his lips. Erwin hadn't moved from the door. It took some time to work his throat.

"You don't smoke."

"You don't lie."

Erwin took a seat on his couch, propped his elbows on his knees and placed his head in his hands, and thought they must look quite the picture like this, the two of them. 

Mike flicked the butt and shut the window. "Not to me, anyway. Which means I can stop feeling bad about needing to do this."

"Do what, Mike?" Erwin rose from his hands, but couldn't find it in himself to rise. "Humiliate me?"

"To prove a point. Remember what you felt a few minutes ago. Remember that feeling, 'cause if you keep acting like you're king of the world, you're gonna get the real thing very, very soon."

"All I learned is that our definitions of  _king of the world_  are very, very different."

"Then let me put it in a way you should understand," Mike said. "Would you resign for him?"

Erwin didn't speak for a moment, struck dumb. "He would never-"

"Don't play dumb. If we took today's exercise to its logical conclusion, would you resign for him?"

"I don't remember this much resistance to my speaking to Armin every night."

"Malone only pretends to be a moron. Separating a father from his son doesn't win him any points. But finding the eternal thorn in his side with another man-"

"You make him sound like a prostitute. We aren't even..."

Mike waited. "Aren't what?"

Erwin's mouth opened and shut. "Anything."

Mike made a valiant effort at a neutral face, but Erwin knew when he's been had. The silence stretched. Mike sat on the windowsill and watched the neighborhood kids chase one another through the nearby park. Levi had always stayed behind with Armin when the other kids were shepherded outdoors. Armin came home and told him how many new words he learned from Mr. Ackerman that day. Goldenrod. Gracious. Galvanized.

"I would," Erwin said.

Mike said nothing. His head met the window with a faint thunk. 

"I don't underestimate him, Erwin," Mike said after some time. "But I think you do. Otherwise, you would've nipped this...whatever this is, in the bud yourself. And I don't hate him, either," he added. "But you chose this life. He didn't."

"How long, Mike?" Erwin asked, though he knew.

"Six months," Mike said, though he knew that Erwin knew. "Just gotta follow the money. Hell, we caught their bookkeeper. Rest is easy. Hey."

Erwin looked up. 

"I could, uh, go to him. Give him the grand speech I gave you when we started all this. Tell him what it takes to be in this business. Or to be anywhere near someone in this business. Especially near a shit-stirrer like you."

"I can't ask you to-"

Mike shrugged. "Nothing to it. At least when he makes a decision, it'll be an informed one."

"Mike?"

"Yeah."

"No more demonstrations."

Mike made an amused huff. "Sure."

Erwin stood, placed the page in a pot, and struck a match. It wouldn't do to have something like this lying around.

He let the match fall, and watched the pages blacken and curl until nothing remained of Levi's name but ashes. Surely, the bustle of the first six months of his first term would fade the edges of Levi's memory.  

It did. 

The first month was the most difficult. No matter how filled to the brim was any given day, there were always pockets of idle time that reversed work's numbing balm with a single sting of nostalgia. The sound of a scratching pen. The flipping of a page. 

If Mike had spoken to Levi, or was in contact with him at all, he didn't let on one way or the other. That was fine. Erwin hoped he had, if only to hope, too, that Levi had long since moved on. They had run through so many practice exams with perfect marks that the test itself no longer concerned him, but what came after. The world, in short. Erwin couldn't take that from him. 

By the second month, their captured bookkeeper had lead them to enough of Malone's enterprises that the man himself paid Erwin a visit, eager to strike a deal. Erwin's camp had no delusions about the reliability of the man's handshake, but it was a breakthrough nonetheless. A swell of false confidence always deafened a man to the ground shifting beneath his feet.

Armin came home. Erwin cleared his entire weekend - to Mike's eternal irritation - to spend every minute of it wherever Armin wanted. By Monday, Erwin was good friends with the staff of nearly every library in the city. 

Marie had visited Armin at Mike's aunt's. They'd gotten on well, though no one recalled that he'd ever called her by anything but Marie. Erwin didn't know what to think of that.

 

One morning, it occurred to him that he had legislation on the books, Malone on trial, and Armin in the next room, hanging baubles on their tree. His hand stilled on the spoon with which he stirred sugar into his coffee. He'd wanted this. He had it. How childish, then, for it all to feel not half as sastisying as he'd imagined.

Hange, having invited themself in, made thoughtful noises from the living room as Armin chattered away. Erwin had listened with one ear, but now with both.

"-soft, salt, said, sad, sold-"

Hange made an amused sound and joined in. "Sort, sale, sled, sat-"

Erwin brought Hange their coffee and helped Armin reach the uppermost branches. Something wasn't sitting right. Maybe it was just something he ate.

"Papa, what are we getting Levi for his birthday?"

Erwin was thankful for the tree for hiding the worst of his deer-in-headlights impression.

Hange handed Armin a string of lights. "Who's Levi?"

"He, uh," Erwin broke in, "was one of Armin's preschool teachers- hand me one end of the lights, please."

When nothing came, Erwin peered around and caught the sour look on Armin's face. It was gone the moment it came. Armin handed him the lights.

That evening, Armin climbed onto Erwin's bed as he read through a stack of bills slated to reach the floor when Congress returned from recess.

"Papa, what are we getting Levi for his birthday?"

"When is it?" Erwin asked, eyes still flitting over the pages. Armin started to bounce in place.

"Christmas."

"Armin, please-" He rescued the pages scattered across the bed from Armin's wandering.

"It's in two weeks," Armin whined.

"There's time."

"Papa."

"Mm."

"Do you know what incorrigible means?"

Erwin looked up. Armin peered back innocently.

"I do, Armin. Who taught you that word?"

"Levi."

Erwin put the bills aside. "Okay." He folded his glasses. "What do you want to get him?"

"I dunno."

"What does Levi like?"

Armin stopped bouncing. That sour face made a comeback. It looked a little too sharp to be a pout, too nonchalant for a frown. Levi made that face.

"Oh!" Armin said suddenly. "Levi likes tea."

"Okay. We'll give him tea. You can pick."

Armin bounded off, no doubt to look up teas on Erwin's laptop. He poked his head back in minutes later. 

"Can we go to the library?"

"Sure," Erwin said as he marked a page.

"This weekend?"

"Sunday's busy. We can go Saturday."

"With Levi?"

Erwin's pen stilled. Armin was good. 

"He's very busy, Armin."

"Nuh-uh."

"With both Christmas and a birthday-"

"No."

"And right in the middle of finals week-"

"No!"

"Very busy."

"Nope."

"Now how would you know that?"

"How do you know he is?"

He watched the boy peer at him, all of him hidden behind the door but his wide eyes and the tips of his fingers. Erwin sighed.

"Okay. We'll call him."

"Right now?"

"Tomorrow."

"Okay!" And he was off.

Erwin sorted the bills and put them aside. Any hope of concentrating on any of them was shot. 

It should be the simplest thing in the world. Just this week, he'd met the governor for lunch, two fellow state representatives for coffee, and spoke with dozens of constituents about everything from visa guidelines in an article of his bill to the color of his tie. He'd think he had a bug from how his gut roiled and his throat closed at the thought of one name. 

True to form, he couldn't sleep that night. 

Six months was not a negligible span of time. Mike had given him the green light two months ago, but Erwin had put it off. Then, he'd thought four months a non-negligible span of time. If he weren't so ashamed to keep Armin from his favorite teacher, he'd put it off forever. It struck him as more than a little possessive to resist knowing what changed in Levi in those months, change he was not a party to, change he hadn't witnessed himself. Once upon a time, he'd prepared to help him look for schools, had prepared what to say no matter what the outcome of the exam, had cataloged to himself where else to take him - to museums and observatories and parks and trails. A calendar from a lifetime ago. 

The next morning, phone in hand and Armin bouncing off the walls, he knew, too, that there was a more than present possibility that Levi wanted nothing to do with Erwin for any of a hundred reasons, and that it was best to frame it as an afternoon with Armin, and not himself. He hoped Armin didn't see the tremor in his hand as he dialed. 


	20. Chapter 20

 

 

 

The ghosts of Erwin's parting words rang in his ears as he sat down to the standardized computer the test center had provided. For a blinding, terrifying instant, the words swam in front of him, the instructions fizzling into lines of illegible static snow. 

No. Deep breaths. Erwin trusted him, believed in him, and the months that had all led up to this point hadn't been a waste. He knew it, knew it in the bottom of his heart, regardless of what his score would be. It would all have been worth it. 

The words resolved themselves on the screen, so much easier than they had crystallized into meaning only less than a year before. "If you are ready, you may begin." 

He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, pictured Erwin and Armin and wondered if they'd changed at all. They might have, but - dared he say it? - lovely as they were, he wasn't sure time and wear and worry would have dared to lay long fingers on them at all. 

Levi opened his eyes, a confidence and a clarity coursing through him, and began.

*

Levi was still in disbelief over his scores when his cellphone rang one balmy night two weeks or so after the exam. He dug it out of his pocket eagerly, praying, hoping that it might be Erwin. 

Much to his disappointment, the number registered as unknown. Unknown. Understood. Unlikely. 

The number hung up, apparently sensing his reluctance, and Levi was just wondering if telemarketers had perhaps gotten more prescient and considerate when the phone started vibrating in his hand. The same number. 

"Hello?" he asked, pressing the phone to his ear tentatively and leaning back in his desk chair. His mother was puttering around downstairs; he could hear her cheerful, hopeful humming as she dusted and wiped down picture frames and turned a hopeful eye to the future. 

"Hello," a deep voice answered. "Levi?" 

"Yes," Levi answered cautiously. "This is him." 

"It's Mike. We met briefly, before. Just to jog your memory, I'm affiliated with Erwin's campaign." 

"Right, of course," Levi agreed, recalling a man with messy straw colored hair, a man with watchful eyes and a look about him as though he'd already found out even the most deeply buried secrets. "I remember." 

"Good," Mike rumbled over the phone. "Listen, there's something we've got to discuss -" 

Levi cut him off before he could get farther. "Is Erwin okay?" he couldn't help but interrupt. "Is Armin?" 

"They're fine," Mike muttered. "They're not the problem. The problem here, you see, is you." 

"Me?" Levi repeated, confused. He wasn't quite sure what Mike was getting at, and there was no real subtext for him to consider. "How do you mean?" 

"Erwin isn't exactly the most careful of candidates," Mike hedged. "His trail, especially in regards to people he might be involved with, isn't exactly highly disguised." 

Levi remained silent. Wherever this was going, it certainly couldn't be good. 

"You're, to put it frankly, a bit of a wild card in his campaign," Mike went on, when it became obvious that Levi wasn't going to say anything. "Some might view you as a charity case." Levi bristled at the thought. "Some might view it as a moral deficiency in someone who's running for office. You can see why I have my concerns, can't you?" 

"I can," Levi gritted out, though it pained him to say it. He'd known, and probably always had known, that his weaknesses would become Erwin's, that eventually the stolen hours and secret smiles and promises would catch up with them. "I might be broken, but I understand you perfectly." 

To his credit, Mike's voice sounded a bit strained when he replied. "I'm glad we're on the same page," he murmured. "However, I'm also well aware of how damn stubborn the man is. Chances are, whatever you are to him, he's not just going to let this thing with you go. Not without a fight. I know the man too well to know his threats, even unspoken, aren't empty. The question here, you see, is what to do with you. You're a liability, you see. An Achilles heel. You might be a target, not just to the campaign, but to Erwin himself." 

"Right," Levi murmured, frowning up at the ceiling. A wayward spider skittered towards the air conditioning vent. "A target." 

"We're going to have surveillance on you around the clock," Mike continued on, as though he hadn't heard Levi's acknowledgment at all. "This is pretty much non-negotiable." 

"Alright," Levi agreed, because there was nothing he could do. "What other demands do you have?" 

"Disappear."

The word was given so promptly and so surely that Levi almost wondered for half a second if he'd misunderstood. 

"Disappear?" he repeated, unsure. 

"Yes. Don't do anything rash, don't do anything that makes you stand out. Blend in. Disappear. I don't care how you do it, just...do it." 

Levi swallowed roughly. "No calls or contact or anything, then, I'm assuming?" 

"That's correct," Mike affirmed, sending another dagger through Levi's heart. "Unfortunately we don't exactly have the power - or the budget - to collect and investigate data transmitted over telephone or email. For now, it's better to just pretend as though...as though nothing's happened. Erwin's assured me that there hasn't been, but you can't ever be too safe." 

"I understand," Levi murmured, swallowing past the lump in his throat. His disbelief and joy over the scores he'd gotten on the exam had all but evaporated. Yes, he thought, he might now be able to go to a top rate school and dig himself further into debt, but he'd never be able to hear Erwin's voice, hear Armin's laughter, feel that soft sort of emotional torment in the way Erwin leaned in towards him to explain the subtext. It was all about the subtext. 

"Fantastic," Mike replied, sounding relieved. "Thank you for being so accommodating. If that's all, and you have no further questions, I wish you a good day." 

"Likewise," Levi mumbled, and shortly after, the soft double beep of the ended call rang in his ear. 

*

It was hard, and Levi would have been lying if he'd said otherwise. Disappearing was the easy part; keeping his thumb from hovering over Erwin's personal contact information felt like torture. He kept waiting for the day when his feelings would dissipate into the ether, and every morning woke up disappointed. He longed to hear Erwin's voice, just for a moment, just for a heartbeat. 

The months trudged endlessly by. His new students seemed to pick up on his listlessness, and grew quieter and quieter as the seasons changed into fall and then into winter. His birthday was coming up, and his school applications were coming along. University. He could hardly breathe for the fantastic picture of him on a campus. It felt too good to be true, and he only longed for someone else to share it with. 

He missed Erwin, desperately. It would be so easy, he reflected during one lunch break when the children were under the supervision of one of the school's stricter monitors. It would be so easy to get in contact again. A shot of guilt flared through him as he flicked open Erwin's contact information on his phone for the umpteenth time. 

Mike had said not to, he reminded himself sternly. Not until...well, he hadn't said, exactly. But not yet. 

He dropped his head in to his hands, his elbows pressing roughly into the harsh mahogany of his desk, and tried to force the daydreams out of his head. They were just fantasies, he hissed to himself, just make believe, pretend. There was nothing at all to consider. 

His phone buzzed at his elbow. He ignored it for a moment, then another, and another. Perhaps the telemarketers were getting better. Perhaps this particular person was very persistent. 

And perhaps, a small voice whispered in the back of his mind, perhaps someone is calling to offer you an interview. 

His heart skipped a beat, and, full of hope, he snatched up his phone, pressing it to his ear and hardly daring to breathe. 

"Hello?" he asked. 


	21. Chapter 21

"Hello, Levi," Erwin said, and for a beat too long, it was all he could think to say. The call felt at once like one he might have had before and yet like nothing Erwin could have prepared for.

Erwin told him that they could speak again for this or that or third reason, though the words themselves rolled out on their rehearsed reel with such factory-line perfection that Erwin needed to consciously remind himself that this wasn't a donor or constituent or colleague or staffer. 

Yet he doubted every sincere word he thought to say and each unrehearsed thought in his head. He had no way of knowing to what extent Levi even remembered, much less cared. If he was frank, he didn't know himself any better. That part of his life - that vivid too-short slice of it dominated by Levi - hadn't been disturbed for much too long.

Hearing his voice wiped the film of dust from the worn glass of a faded frame. It had been so long since he'd even thought of him - Capitol Hill is a hell of a distraction. 

So he put on the charming and inoffensive voice that turned microphones and cameras because that was easy and that was safe and Erwin told him that Armin had a surprise for him, that Armin wanted to meet, and that he was dreadfully sorry if it was last minute or intrusive or whatever else he said with half an ear to his own words as the frame cleared and shined and his mind filled with the image of his cautious yet graceful gait, with the stubborn shape of his lips around a punishing phrase, and at once, he wanted with uncommon intensely to know where he had been and what he had seen and where he was going.

Erwin wanted to know about the exam, wanted to ask. But he didn't want to hurt him by assuming he'd done well when he may have not, nor insult him by hedging his bets. There was no focus tested control group that would tell him what cadence to manufacture, what lilt to fabricate. 

Armin bounced on his feet and reached for the phone.

Erwin couldn't assume that Levi was the man he had been six months ago or even that he himself hadn't changed. He had. They had. 

But after a moment of stubborn resistance from that part of him that squeezed dimes from moneymen and truths from robber barons, he was reminded of the last time he'd felt something like freedom - from polish, from prestige, from expectation, from doubt.  

"I'll let Armin do the rest," he said with mechanical cheer, mouth quicker than his heart.

Armin reached for the phone again. Erwin couldn't make himself move. 

Armin crossed his arms, the picture of impatience. Erwin couldn't move. He couldn't leave it like this. He couldn't live another second not knowing whether Levi was where he wanted to be. And he couldn't pretend not to know the answer.

"-after," Erwin said to Armin, though Levi could surely hear, "I know that Mister Levi is keeping on top of his application deadlines."

 

* * *

 

Levi's heart started racing, rabbiting frantically in his chest. He'd hoped, prayed, desperately believed that Erwin might call him again one day, but it hadn't stopped him from starting to lose hope. It felt almost too good to be true, almost like that feeling he'd had back in the testing center, staring at the screen, and realizing that for once all of the words and letters stayed surely in their place. 

"I, yes, yeah. Applications," he spluttered, his tongue tangled and his words thick. "Deadlines. I am. On top of them, I mean." 

There was so much to tell him. So many things to ask, and so many things to tell. He wanted to ask how Armin was doing, how Erwin's campaign was doing. Had he resolved those problems that Mike had alluded to in his phone call? Was Armin happy? Did they still manage to go to the library every week? Levi didn't think so, because he'd been visiting some of the local ones fairly regularly in the hopes that maybe he'd catch a flash of blonde hair among the stacks and Armin's high childish laughter from the children's corner. His mother had come with him once, asked him about the slightly forlorn and disappointed look he'd had on his face when he couldn't find them, and he'd quickly told her some lie about not being able to find a book he wanted. 

His personal life - love life, perhaps? - wasn't something he was eager to discuss, especially with the words that had just so newly started to come back to him. 

"What about you?" he asked, before his mouth could run off any more. He forced himself to slow down, forced himself to keep his questions at bay. Then, remembering Mike's warnings, he asked, "Will this call get you in trouble?" 

 

* * *

 

Erwin squeezed his eyes shut, unprepared for the surge of pride in his chest. He was applying. He'd passed. He'd done it.

Armin made faces as Erwin commandeered the phone for a while longer. "Good. That's good," he said, struggling to reign in the thousand other things he'd say as he registered the hesitance in his words, the abrupt stops. He hadn't expected them to pick right up as if no time had passed and yet an unruly part of him longed for it, longed to return to the height of their comfort and confidence with one another and return immediately. 

"And there's no trouble," he said. "Mike gave us the green light." He swallowed. His throat had become dry. "As green as can be, of course-" He stopped himself. There would always be trouble of one sort or another. He knew it, and if Levi didn't know then, he certainly did now. But there was no point in voicing it now. He didn't want to emerge after so long only to carelessly thread anxieties through his nerves. Not again. "I won't keep you long," he said instead. "Armin has something to ask you."

At his name, Armin brightened and hopped in place for the phone. With it in hand at last, he giggled excitedly and went on and on, hopping all the while as he implored Levi to join them at the library on Saturday. He didn't speak for a time while Levi spoke, and Erwin was at once adamant that Levi's words for him remain for him alone, and endlessly curious to know what words could have inspired such intensity in his eyes. Armin glanced slyly at Erwin and turned giddily away when Erwin caught his eye.

Only when Armin belted out a goodbye, set the phone on a table and rushed to his room to follow one activity with another in the untroubled way few but children can, did Erwin feel the strain at his shoulders and back from how stiff he'd held them.

He looked at the phone on the kitchen table as Armin played in the other room and repeated Levi's words in his head simply to hear them. He'd forgotten the sound of his voice. 

He looked at the phone on the library table as Armin curled up in his favorite corner and remembered Levi's words in his head simply to remember. He's going to hear the sound of his voice.

 

* * *

 

As green as could be, Erwin had said. Levi gnawed on his lower lip in thought. That might have been all well and fine, in any other circumstance, but he felt that what Erwin might fail to realize was that there were varying shades of green. 

Armin's voice filled the line with chatter, and Levi realized, letting out a breath he hadn't been aware he'd been holding. 

"You'll be at the library," he declared, in the self-confident way that children have. As though Levi would dare to refuse him anything. Not now. It had been far too long since he'd seen his sunshine smile and the dimple that appeared in the pocket of his cheek. "Say you will, won't you, Mr. Levi?" 

"I will, I will," Levi promised, trying hard not to laugh. The promises sent a pang of longing through his heart, an odd mix of happiness and regret. He didn't exactly want to ask Armin any leading questions, didn't want to put words into the boy's mouth for his own selfish hopes that Erwin might, somehow, in some way, be missing him too. "Listen, Armin..." He could hear him holding his breath on the other end of the line, waiting for whatever Mr. Levi might be about to say and trusting that whatever his next words were would be the truth. No. He couldn't bear to be so greedy. "Listen. Take care of your dad for me, okay? He's probably really busy with work and everything, right?" He could almost hear Armin's nod over the wire. "Just take care of him, okay? Make sure he sleeps enough and eats enough and plays with you enough, alright?" 

"Okay," Armin murmured in a voice that Levi would almost have called small. Levi knew it was a big promise to make, and only wished he'd been able to convey what he really hoped for. "Promise." 

"Good," Levi said, but there was a clattering sound on the other end, as though Armin had set the phone down. It hadn't been hung up yet, and he wondered if Erwin was still there. Maybe he'd wandered away to do something else, Levi thought wistfully. Maybe he was making a snack, or standing by the sink and drinking a cup of coffee, or lying down on the couch to take a well-deserved nap. Maybe, he thought to himself, if he listened to the slow silence hard enough, he'd feel closer to him. 

 

* * *

 

Armin bounded across the library when they first stepped through its doors. Erwin couldn't remember how long ago it was when he accompanied Armin and not a friend or babysitter. Each time they found pockets of time to spend together, Armin seemed to grow inches vertically and apart. Maybe he was imagining things. His son bounded back and tugged at his arm to take him to his favorite section.

It was a strange thing to imagine when the days leading up to the weekend should have proved anything but. Armin had been close to tantrum when he insisted that Erwin not skip lunch. He'd then crawl into his bed as Erwin annotated documents and kicked up a fuss if Erwin was still at it by a certain hour. Erwin couldn't bring himself to reprimand him, to even feel genuinely annoyed. Not once. 

Armin carried the small wrapped box of tea with him like a charm. They'd gone to a proper tea shop - Armin wouldn't have it if his gift didn't pass muster. The place was intimate in size, heady in aroma. He'd never thought to describe anything as a peaceful barrage, yet the place was just that. It wouldn't shock him if the smells lingered on their clothes for days. 

He watched Armin pick between books and hop into a seat beside him. He listened as he read aloud to Erwin at their corner table. How he wished he could follow the story if not for the still-dizzying shroud of jasmines and peppermints, if not for the unusual reversal of being read to, rather than doing the reading. Maybe growing separately did not mean growing apart.

Erwin smiled when Armin looked up for encouragement. He leaned back, arms crossed and mind swimming pleasantly as the words knit him a shroud. He closed his eyes for just a moment. 

 

* * *

 

They had come in precisely thirteen minutes ago, and Levi had hid quickly behind the stacks, watching through the piles of paper and laminate covering as Armin raced to the children's corner to pick out a book. His golden hair flashed in the milky sunlight filtering through the windows, and Levi held his breath as his eyes trailed back to where Erwin had plopped himself into a squashy armchair, resting his head against its soft backing and letting his eyes fall closed. He was holding a small rectangular package, something covered with a dark red wrapping in a box that looked just big enough to hold an item of jewelry, a watch, perhaps, and Levi wondered with a flash of doubt if maybe he'd been mistaken. Maybe he'd read the cues wrong, looked deeper into things than he should have. 

Erwin looked tired. In the time they'd been apart, he'd grown paler, gaunter, dark circles brushing under his eyes and his lips pinched closely together in what seemed like a permanent expression of worry. Levi knew all about worry, knew it was natural, even expected, but he couldn't help but feel a twinge of anxious concern. Armin looked happy, at least. His smile brightened the room, and the smile Erwin returned banished the shadows from his face for a moment. 

"Where's Mr. Levi?" Armin wondered, his voice carrying through the stacks and finding its way to where Levi was still waiting with breathless anticipation. "He said he would be here." 

Erwin's head turned a degree, his lips moving with the low timbre of his voice, too quiet for Levi to hear. Maybe he was saying something along the lines of, 'Be patient,' or 'Let's just give him a few minutes.' 

Be patient, Levi agreed, more of a reminder to himself than anything else, and he plucked a book at random from the shelves and began to make his way towards the two of them. 

 


	22. Chapter 22

He stirred when Armin gasped, and opened his eyes a touch more when Armin abandoned his book to grab the little box and patter away somewhere behind him. On the tips of his toes, no less.

He smiled at the image of it even as his heart picked up at his excited whispering. At an exchange of a box, at another's response. 

Erwin rubbed the tension from his eyes and stood in time to catch Armin's bounding jumps and gushing promises to show Levi how many books he'd read. He'd already hopped away again by the time Erwin approached them, eager to find those very books to show Levi his favorite parts. Armin wasn't technically his student anymore - not on paper - but never was it clearer how little that mattered.

Levi turned to him as Armin left. Even in his usual slacks, dress shirt and jacket - standard dress for his position, and he was loathe to break routine except to ditch the tie - Erwin felt underdressed. He was a schoolboy again, caught before the class without his book report.

It was less to do with the man's appearance  - certainly unhurt by the fitted shirt and jeans or the artful fall of his hair - than how he carried himself. Nowhere was the slouch, the baggy clothes, the uncertain gaze. When Levi caught his eye, he held it. When he turned, it was with purpose. For one hysterical moment, Erwin wondered if this was the wrong man. If he himself was the wrong man.

"You look great," fell out of his mouth before he could think better of it.

Erwin cleared his throat and canted his head toward Armin, certain he could bury the slip if he acted quickly. Conspiratorially, he whispered, "He's going to tell you that he's grown out of the Magic Tree House books, but," he added with a finger to his smiling lips, "I know for a fact he's been rereading Summer of the Sea Serpent for weeks."

 

* * *

 

"I'd expect nothing less," Levi replied, gravely, but with a hint of a smile on his face. The wrapped box was pleasantly heavy in his hand, and the feeling of relief that he'd felt when Armin pushed it into his hands threatened to overwhelm him. 

And why should it? some secret part of him wanted to know. Why should you feel so threatened if someone else, perhaps, might have inserted themselves into Erwin's life? You haven't seen him, actually seen him, in quite a while. 

And then, remembering what Erwin had said earlier. "You're..." He'd meant to say something along the lines of how Erwin looked not too shabby himself, but he had the feeling it might ring too strongly of a patent falsehood. "You've looked better," he said, honestly. 

 

* * *

 

Erwin smiled and threaded his hand through his hair self consciously. "I'm hurt," he teased. "Are late nights and fast food not in style?"

It was difficult to look at him and retain any semblance of composure at the same time, so he watched Armin rummage through the shelves.

"I couldn't see anyone. No friends, family. No Armin. Strange how quickly you can get used to anything. Made something of a recluse out of me." 

It was one thing to meet staff and constituents. There was a common language and a mutual understanding of obligations and expectations. Nothing more, and no less.  Beyond those circles, he was sorely out of practice. It was a clumsy apology.

 Erwin thought of Armin's push to get them to the library, to get out of the house, to see Levi again. He smiled at him. "He's been, uh- is helping with that."

He met raucous town hall goers last week with, in a reporter's words, "supernatural grace", yet could not string together a few words for an audience of one.

Armin's little "Aha" meant he'd found the last of the books he meant to show Levi. He would return, gush for a few minutes, and they would hopefully be on their way. Levi regarded Armin with fondness, and his father, with aggressive curiosity. Erwin found himself lacking. Undeserving. He couldn't find the words he needed, and stumbled over their placid placeholders. 

But he was curious, too. Madly.

When Armin had talked himself silly and gone to place the books back, Erwin prolonged it all just a bit longer to ask Levi about his plans, his dreams. To ask, "What will you do? Where will you go?"

 

* * *

 

"Well, I'm still waiting to hear back. Admission decisions don't come back until early April," he proceeded carefully, forcing himself to focus on Armin's shadow leaping across the stacks so he wouldn't have to look at Erwin and see how he was taking the news. "Seems like it's the hardest part. Waiting." 

It might have been his imagination, but he would have bet that he'd seen Erwin flinch a bit out of the corner of his eye. 

"I'm thinking about moving," he continued, in a burst of words so sudden he hadn't known he was thinking about it, somewhere deep in his subconscious, until just precisely now. "Thinking about...at least living by myself, I guess," he finished, lamely, even though his mind still raced with thoughts of a new city and a new atmosphere, unfamiliar people and tall glittering buildings taking the underbellies of the clouds. "I've never really -" He paused, thinking of the right words. "I've never really grown up, I suppose." 

And yet, there was some element of hesitancy holding him back. 

"I would like to stay too, though," he mumbled, trying to judge Erwin's reactions without fully looking. "I don't really want to leave -" 

You, was what he'd been going to say, but that seemed too blunt and far too desperate for such a benign setting. It was something a sobbing actress might say on a rainy set of a drama-comedy that played late Saturday nights, and Levi didn't particularly enjoy that kind of cliche. 

"I don't really want to leave," he finished, hoping that Erwin hadn't heard the unspoken pause for a word that hadn't been filled in. 

 

* * *

 

It was the hardest part.

"You know," Erwin said, "I'm in town for another week. Lived in this city all my life, but I've never seen so much of it as I have since the election. Places and things I would never have known otherwise. People I'd have never spoken to. Places I can't forget. It'd be a shame to leave before seeing it all." Armin toddled over and raised his arms. Erwin picked him up. He dozed off with his head on his shoulder nearly the moment he placed it there.

To make his intentions clear, he gave a soft pat to Armin's back and said, "Nifa can look after this one. Though I caught him helping her study for civics with flashcards once," he smiled, "so I'm not sure who looks after whom."

Erwin looked at Levi fully, sincerely, and made sure to get something nice for his scheduling assistant later. "Tomorrow. Tonight. I'm all yours."

 

* * *

 

Tonight, Levi had decided before Erwin had even finished talking. There was no time like the present, seize the day and all that. 

"Tonight," he clarified, maybe too quick after Erwin's last words. Was he being too eager? He didn't think so. He thought the clues, that all infuriating subtext, was enough to assume a certain reciprocity. Five syllables, and he had them all lined up neatly in his mind. 

"If your sitter can watch him," Levi continued, the name already escaping him. It was a detail, one of many in a snarled, tangled nest of thoughts, but he didn't want Erwin to know it had escaped him already. "I was hoping maybe we could go to this place on Fifth and Oak, it's new? For dinner? Though of course I don't know if that would be too much publicity for you, or Mike, but I read somewhere that any publicity is good publicity." The words refused to stop coming, a train whose engineer had somehow sabotaged the brakes halfway over a rickety wooden bridge, and Levi braced himself for an impact that he felt sure would be debilitating. 

 

* * *

 

Hardly had he finished speaking when Levi had given him his answer. Erwin had to hide his disbelief. He'd expected some thought, maybe surprise. He'd expected a bit of awkwardness, prepared several distractions and misdirections to lead into that final goodbye. Despite everything he'd seen with his own eyes and heard with his very ears, he couldn't believe there was no more obstacle, no more wait. None but himself. 

He'd waited for so long that it had become routine. Inertia had become a comfort. He didn't remember how to do this. 

The dinner would be a problem. There would be publicity. The dining partner of a single father whose marital affairs were a campaign flashpoint would not escape his opponents' scrutiny. The clout he gained from playing exterminator to the city's pests may shield him, but not Levi. His words, too, stung with a civilian naivete that had never known a manufactured scandal. Erwin wondered how deeply Levi would regret this, regret ever knowing Erwin at all, if he were to find his face and name the next morning in papers and search engines attached to speculation too wild for gossip rags. 

He was thinking too much, and for too long. 

"Must have been out of town too long," he recovered cheerfully. "Haven't even heard of it."

He spoke again before all the excuses and fears in the world churned into a refusal.

"Is seven alright? I can pick you up. Mike should have enough time to check whether we have any reporters in the room, maybe give us a shout at which tables to avoid. Might as well give him something to do while he's between clients," he added conspiratorially. Armin clutched at his shirt in his sleep.

-

His phone vibrated. Mike's digging brought up a few food bloggers and an internet-based makeup artist. In short, nothing. Mike hadn't even asked him the occasion - or the partner. Traffic was light. The evening skies were clear. Erwin released his terse grip on the steering wheel as he waited on Levi's street. They may actually have a quiet, peaceful night. For the umpteenth time, he ran a hand over his slacks and straightened the front of his blazer. 

 


	23. Chapter 23

 

"Erwin, is it?" his mother asked, peeking curiously around the doorframe for what felt like the fifth time in the past two minutes. Levi couldn't help fidgeting, creasing and folding down his collar before unfolding it and smoothing out yet another imaginary wrinkle. Despite his best attempts to keep his intentions a secret, his mother had been taking more of an interest in his social life as of late, and he felt he couldn't deny her that one small pleasure. 

"Yes, Erwin," he agreed, glancing critically at his reflection once again. He frowned despairingly at an errant lick of hair that curled over his forehead. 

"The same Erwin I've been reading about in the news?" she wanted to know. "Or a different one?" 

"That one, but we're trying to keep it a bit of a secret," Levi murmured, trying to comb the misplaced strand back towards his temple and failing. 

"He seems...very intense," his mother added, projecting a hint of worry that Levi picked up on right away. He'd gotten much better at that. 

"It's not like that," he protested, giving up the hair as a lost cause. "He's not like that to me." 

His mother didn't ask him to explain more, and Levi was grateful she didn't press for more information. He didn't know quite how to describe him. Softer, when he was with Levi. A good teacher and a good father. Someone whose words and mind had never failed him before. 

He was waiting outside now, Levi knew; he could see the softly glowing headlights dusting the mailbox and a triangle of lawn. He rehearsed what he was going to say, for the umpteenth time. Good evening, how are you doing, I think I might like you more than is wise. 

Alright. Perhaps not the last one. That might have been taking the subtext a little too into context, as Erwin might have joked before. 

"Stop worrying," Kuchel soothed, reaching out and smoothing his now-wrinkled collar out for him. "Have a good time." 

Levi took a deep breath. "I will," he promised, smiling bravely, but still nearly tripping over his own feet as he made his way downstairs and out to the waiting car. 

The carefully rehearsed greeting he'd prepared stumbled off his tongue as he all but stumbled into his seat and into the warm glow of Erwin's smile. "How good are you evening?" he demanded, before bursting into a nervous laugh that he found impossible to control.   
He dimly hoped Erwin found it, at the very least, charming. 

 

* * *

   
"I imagine the evening feels perfect," Erwin teased. 

Levi's nervous energy had nearly as great a presence in the car as the man himself. Erwin pulled out and wondered how best to distract him.

"Do stop me if I start promoting budget proposals halfway through out of habit," he said as they slowed at a red light. "I can't remember the last time I went out for anything that wasn't some negotiation or other."

City lights bloomed and stained them neon as they rounded a corner onto a busier street. Erwin rolled down his window a touch to cool the warm interior. He blew unsuccessfully at a strand of hair that had fallen into his eyes. "You'd be shocked at how many respectable looking gentlemen wipe their hands on their trousers and pick their teeth with their nails when the reporters leave. I haven't decided yet whether its supposed to be a power move or if men of a certain age become nostalgic for the toddler years."

 

* * *

 

Levi sank back into his seat, slumping with relief. Erwin's voice still had that comforting resonance to it, and he could tell that Erwin was no longer inserting artificial pauses between his words in a subtle attempt to let him catch up. It had been there before, and Levi hadn't realized how much of a burden it had placed on him. 

"I'm hard to shock," he declared, almost proudly now. He was still nervous, still waiting to see where the evening would take them, but it was easier now. Evening lights flickered by the window, street lamps and soon the softer reds and blues of neon signs. After what felt all too soon, Erwin was pulling the car into a narrow slot and clicking the key out of the ignition. "Tell me all about it over dinner?"

 

* * *

 

"Oh, I don't know. These are important people," Erwin trailed as they left the car, as he offered his arm, as they strode to the door. "Think you can you keep a secret?"

The air was brisk, the lighting warm, the drinks sharp. Erwin had prepared only his best anecdotes from his first whirlwind months in the capital. The small quirk at Levi's lip bested every belly laugh he'd otherwise gotten. It made Erwin equal parts greedy and small - the one for wanting to see it more and without end, and the other for seeming to himself too loud and too big and too boorish next to his dinner partner's effortless cool. 

But he was left no time for insecurity when the thrill of relearning all the minute shifts in his brow and cants of his head robbed his attention entirely.

Erwin asked after his family and studies and received the sort of answers he might have gotten on a chance meeting in the street, not with an evening stretched before them and candlelight between them. 

So he went on about the usual colleagues and intrigue before he wondered if he might be leading by example. Nothing he'd said yet would have seemed out of place at some street corner either. Levi knew his assistant's name, but not how she reminded Erwin of home. He knew where he liked to stop for lunch, but not why. 

He didn't know that when Erwin had first taken a seat, his grade school neighbor had scribbled furiously at her drawings with one hand and eaten cheese sticks with the other. A whale. A dolphin. A lionfish. He didn't know that Erwin never saw her again, didn't know that he ate only there and only in that seat when he was in town and would be a little embarrassed to admit it was for nothing but that circuitous thread that passed from shop to girl to lionfish to Armin and Levi. He didn't know, because Erwin didn't tell him. It wasn't safe. It wasn't sure.

Underlining the absurdity of the thought was the soft twang of guitar by the musician a few tables behind them. Circling it was the restaurant's low hum that prohibited speech but at its most intimate. Punctuating it was Levi himself, so seemingly unbothered by the flight of the platonic from this place that Erwin's chatter must have seemed even more like something out of budget meeting small talk. He hadn't done this in a long time. He hadn't had time to prepare, to research, to seek advice. But Levi wasn't a campaign. 

He wanted to stop thinking. He wanted to be a fool. 

The waiter arrived with a plate of bruschetta. Levi smirked as Erwin's tomato tumbled off at his bite only for his own to betray him likewise.

They chewed silently with goofy grins. 

Erwin reached for another and stopped. He could barely swallow past the tightness in his throat. 

"I missed you," he said. "I missed being with you."

 

* * *

 

"Did you now?" Levi asked, trying to ignore the way his throat had tightened, the wetness of the tomato feeling suddenly dry on his tongue. It was about the subtext, he thought as he furiously knotted his fingers in the linen napkin on his lap. Erwin had told him that, he'd learned that over and over again, but there couldn't possibly be much subtext to something as obvious as that. 

"Was that the secret?" he inquired, hopefully trying to determine if it was the case. If yes, he decided, then it would be cut and dried. Bare bones. Clear as a bell. Erwin would have missed him, and Levi would be able to say he'd missed him in return, because reciprocating something once said was much easier than spinning the words from the air. 

If no...if he was holding something else back. Levi twisted the napkin into further knots. 

The waiter came by again, whisking away the bruschetta before Levi could push the last toast point off to Erwin, and returned seemingly an instant later with steaming mounds of pasta. He talked incessantly about pepper. Levi surrendered to the pepper grinder's advances, and thought Erwin looked a little amused by the whole thing. Amused was good, he decided, even as he wondered if pepper fanaticism was part of the rustic charm this place was supposed to have in spades. Amused would cast his words into a softer atmosphere, and Levi felt he could handle them better that way. 

The pepper sharpened his tongue, and, even as he tried to contain himself, Levi muttered quickly, "I missed you, too. A lot." 

He could feel heat flushing across his face rather embarrassingly, and was mildly grateful for the dim lighting in the corner they were seated in. Intended to be romantic, no doubt, and he blushed harder at the thought. 

 

* * *

 

Erwin laughed. "I suppose it was."

Levi's admission sobered him. Erwin hummed around a bite.

"Can't have that," he said. "We'll need to do something about it."

Rooting out spare time in his schedule was no easy thing. As much as he enjoyed tonight, he'll be compensating for it the night after. He thought of the teaching event he'd attend on Monday, a local community house program that invites researchers to give lessons and demonstrations to kids after school and during breaks.

He described it over tiramisu, and on the way to the car. 

"I'll be making a few of these stops this week," he said as he stepped into the falling snow. "Before heading to D.C. to observe the larger, more obtuse children," he added with a wink. "It's one thing to see the numbers, to know that a program is helping students, and another to see it yourself."

They hit a leisurely stride, hands hidden in jacket and coat from the chill. Their arms knocked once, then didn't quite separate.

"I don't see why I can't invite a consultant," he opened the car door for Levi. "If he's interested."

 

* * *

 

That was an invitation if he'd ever heard one. Levi dipped into the car, a bit breathless from the slight chill that had cropped up during dinner and the invitation that had been extended so smoothly for his benefit. The subtext was heavy, the implications heavier still. 

"Would his, ah, position be a permanent one? What sort of time sale* (scale) would this consultant be operating on?" Levi wanted to know, privately hoping it would be a long assignment, one that lasted weeks, months, possibly even throughout a year and time to come. Campaigning wasn't easy, he'd gleaned that much, and one's work was never finished, so perhaps there might be a chance. 

He thought vaguely of the acceptance letters and the lists of potential apartments he'd been looking at, pressed into a corner of his desk in a slightly messy pile that his mother liked to smile hard at whenever she came knocking at the doorjamb to tell him something. She didn't want him to leave, either, despite her insistence that he was more than ready to take care of himself; he'd known that much ever since he'd watched her smile falter for the briefest of seconds when the first thick envelope pressed with a silver gilt crest had been stuffed into their mailbox. 

The car rumbled to life beneath them, and Erwin flicked on the headlights, spraying cones of warm light across the road. A soft warm breeze gusted from the vents, Erwin's hand reaching out to adjust the direction of the current towards Levi first. A study in small gestures, Levi knew, and a big picture that had, to him, suddenly become clear. 

"Would it be presumptuous to say the consultant is already interested?" he asked, no longer quite as anxious about the answer. The nerves had faded away, and all he could feel was warm.

 

* * *

 

Erwin smiled. His face ached with it. His shoulders fell from their tense perch.

"Not at all," he said softly. 

Erwin thought of his other questions, thought of what they might tell him of Levi's plans that the man hadn't revealed himself. He wanted to influence whether Levi left or stayed as little as possible.

He'd drawn Marie into his orbit, too, when he had first begun exploring the potential in running for office, and he himself had spun so narrowly as he'd chased his own ambitions that he assumed, selfishly, that hers and his were one and the same.

He couldn't do it again. He couldn't do that to Levi.

"My consultant is welcome whenever his schedule permits," Erwin teased, forcing the gloom from his face. This was no time for it.

They pulled up to Levi's home. The sensation of the car coming to a stop frayed the last of his control and pulled every muscle taut with longing. Only that same morning, Erwin expected to exchange a gift and be on his way, confident in the distance time forced between them, only for it to shorten back to a hair's breadth in one evening.

He glanced at Levi, only to find that he, too, looked as uncertain as Erwin felt, as hesitant to move as Erwin was to see him go, and Erwin laughed. They've waited so long. And still, they're waiting.

"I had a great night, Levi," he said. Erwin looked at his wind-ruffled hair, his nose bitten pink, his always-worried brow. He felt his own brow twist, his hands clench the wheel and his breath climb at how he missed him, how he adored him. 

Before thinking better of it, he leaned across the console and pressed his lips to Levi's cheek. 


	24. Chapter 24

Levi felt his skin flush warm, and he was grateful that dusk had fallen. Its cool darkness disguised the redness, but Erwin could most likely feel its heat against his lips. Levi had read somewhere that lips had bundles of touch receptors, enough to easily discern the two slight pinpricks of a pair of calipers only a breath apart. The rest of the accompanying text, and the dry diagrams and captions, had fallen along the wayside in the banks of his memory. Too technical, and too unable to explain the way the butterflies in his stomach had suddenly started to riot. 

It wasn't the time or place for shyness, though. The subtext was heavily defined in black permanent marker, some annotation off to the side of the column of text. Erwin, however, hadn't seemed to realize this. 

"I had a great night, too," Levi replied, glad that his words didn't stutter on the way out. "Excellent, in fact." Excellent was an understatement. 

He turned his head, breathless, a fraction of a degree. A fraction was enough, a boldness rewarded. His mouth brushed hesitantly over Erwin's, a rasp of velvet and the thoughts of calipers and sensitivities, before pressing harder. 

 

* * *

 

Erwin thought it an accident, how Levi's lips brushed his own as he turned his head, maybe in surprise, maybe a reflex. He steeled himself, prepared to think nothing of it.

But as Erwin made the smallest move to pull away, Levi chased his touch.

Erwin's hands rose to his face and felt his own warm. Levi grew restless with his leisurely pace and pressed still harder. Erwin stroked the sweep of his cheekbones, quieted him with soft passes through his hair. He wasn't going anywhere.

Their lips parted with a soft sound. 

Erwin brushed a thumb against Levi's, light. "I imagined this, sometimes," he confessed, before stealing another.

The drive home was the most harrowing of his life. His foot hit the pedal either too sharply or missed it entirely. City lights swayed. Nothing felt real.  

Armin grumbled when Erwin came home, embraced him, kissed him until he was batted away. He stood in the middle of the kitchen with his phone in his hands, his heart in his throat, and his name in tags and search bars. Nothing. No pictures. No rumors. The night had been theirs. Theirs, alone. 

He tossed that night with an ache, all-consuming, in his chest.

 

* * *

 

His mother was sleeping when he entered, her head tilting slightly against a cushion whose corner tassels had started to fray and dull years ago. Levi was thankful for small miracles like this one; he was sure she'd be able to see his face burning like a flame, candlelit glow shining through the newfound sparkle of his eyes. Rosy glasses weren't only one way, and Levi had a sneaking suspicion that his mother would find his affixed firmly to his face. 

"I'd imagined this," Erwin had said. Levi had wanted to reply in the affirmative, had wanted to agree. Fervent like their kisses. Furious, with his former self for his uncertainty. Furtive, the thoughts still trapped in the back of his mind. He was sure Erwin had gotten the meaning well enough, though. Actions were louder than words, in more than one sense. 

Levi nudged his mother, gently. She woke with a small gasp of surprise, her eyes bleary as she blinked up at him in the dim glow of the lamp she'd left lit on the small wooden table beside the armchair. 

"You're back a bit late," she mumbled, not admonishing, not surprised, either. He held out a hand to her; her fingers were cool and smooth in his own as he helped her up and led her up the stairs. "Had a good time?"

"Excellent time," he agreed, and he thought he caught a shadow of a smile darting across her face as he left her at her bedroom door. 

The butterflies had started to settle in his stomach, and despite the slight chill in the air, he flung open his window to cool his burning face as he poured himself into bed. It hadn't been a mistake, or so he hoped, and Levi was already wondering when the next opportunity might present itself. The small stack of apartment advertisements on the side of his desk shivered in the light breeze.

 

* * *

 

It was a warm winter. The students - primary schoolers, mostly - gathered outside to study solids and particles, and to stomp protons and nuclei into the snow. 

Levi watched beside him, only answering the occasional questions of a passing child and trying to hold in a smirk when Erwin feigned ignorance to the proctor's elementary questions to draw giggles from the students. 

They wandered around the neighborhood afterward and traded impressions. Levi, as always, noted a slew of details Erwin could never have caught on his own. 

Erwin invited him again, and Levi accepted.

There was an easiness about them now. All the uncertainty of the library and the tentativeness of the dinner had passed, now seemed like years ago. 

A rhythm, too. Though the initial swell of recognition for Erwin's victory had lessened enough that he could walk the streets freely, the occasional passerby or roving reporter flags him down to talk about a local development or to get his comment on some policy or other, respectively. Erwin responds and delivers as quickly as he could before Levi concocts one genius excuse after another to free him without antagonizing the other party - not overtly, anyway.

Erwin watches him mingle with the kids they meet with an ache in his chest. Armin asked about him constantly. Levi came around several times over the next month to read to him. 

Erwin asked, jokingly, when he would read to him next. Levi gave him a date.

It was difficult to restrain the impulse to imagine this going on always and forever. To imagine coming home after weeks of marathon votes in D.C. to Armin's hugs. To Levi's touch. Governing was not campaigning. It was slower. It was harder. For weeks, he would wake, ready himself for the day's work in sight of the National Mall, and linger at the door just to long. To feel the Wait for several heavy, honey-thick seconds before heading out. To tell himself that he would see him again. 

But a quiet fog slowly drifted over Levi not two months since they ran out of school programs to observe and simply went to the park or the pier, or to wherever the day took them. 

Levi didn't talk about his plans and redirected any questions, so Erwin didn't ask anymore. But he wanted to know. He needed to know how deeply he could share himself with him. He needed to know if, to Levi, this was a momentary curiosity. A pleasant excursion before leaving to pursue his life in earnest. Erwin would never begrudge him that.

But it was the potential for more that laced tension into every greeting, threaded longing into every goodbye. 

The old restlessness snaked between them again before Erwin could stop it. 

They strolled across a park as the setting sun set them aflame. They stepped over the first bursts of spring arching out of carpets of soft, melting snow. That night, Levi would read to him. 

Erwin never imagined he wouldn't want it, but the snake had long since made its home in the silence between them. Even if Levi hadn't yet decided, he was close. If their time together really was limited, he couldn't bear it if it was robbed by apprehension, by fear.

Levi stopped a pace after Erwin had, never too far in his thoughts to forget Erwin's steps beside him. Erwin enveloped him in his arms and pressed his lips to his temple. 

"Whatever happens next," he whispered. "I'll love this. I'll love you."

 

* * *

 

Levi had been musing - again - over Mike's warnings that had come over the telephone wires what felt like another lifetime ago. He knew they were silly things to concentrate on, knew that the transcript of the call had already probably been incinerated or stuffed into some hack competitor wiretapper's back drawer gathering dust, or, if he was being optimistic, all but forgotten. Part of the human condition, though, he supposed, to worry at things when life seemed to be going easily. Bumps in the night and overactive imaginations. His certainly had started to fling itself into overdrive, once his tongue and mouth and mind had started to remember what it was like to work together in a well oiled machine. 

Erwin's embrace all but erased the faint traces of unease brought about by the memory of Mike's stern, disapproving voice rasping at him through the speaker. His quiet admission of love sent a warmth filtering through Levi's soul, and he couldn't help but smile and hug Erwin back just as tightly. 

"You're worried," he noted, with a slight shock; the set of Erwin's shoulders was running a little tenser than normal, the muscles a little more strained. He pulled back to crane his neck up at Erwin. The sun had just dipped below the ridge of trees ringing the park, and Erwin's expression was a little difficult to make out. "You're worried even though you said you wouldn't be worrying. Weren't worried, that is." 

He reached up to sweep the tips of his fingers across Erwin's cheek, fluttering his fingertips over Erwin's forehead. As he'd expected, there was a thin furrow between Erwin's brows, and he could all but imagine the slight tight set of the other man's mouth as he pushed back whatever it was he'd been wanting to say. 

You don't have to worry, was what Levi wanted to say, but it sounded too trite, too Lifetime channel placebo-ish. It rang of a cheap lie, a false platitude, and how good it felt to be able to think like that. He had the feeling that he'd be spending the rest of his life trying to repay Erwin for the gift of his revival. 

A hassled-sounding mother shouted for her child to get off the swings, it was time to go home. Levi's thoughts glanced briefly towards Armin, who would probably be sitting up waiting for their return despite his sitter's best attempts at cajoling. Promises of five more minutes of TV, an extra cookie with dinner, yet another bedtime story from Armin's extensive collection, had probably already been made and discarded as objects of minimal value. Now, if Erwin had promised Armin that perhaps, if he was very good, Levi might stay for the foreseeable future, that was a different story. That was a concept that had no value attached to it, other than a sort of breathless expectation. 

Erwin had floated the idea by him casually more than a few times, ever since it had become apparent that the community education program he'd invited Levi to join had been a rousing success. The first time it had been mentioned, Levi had brushed it off. The second time, he'd made some sort of noncommittal remark about how he was sure to be driven mad with Erwin's poor housekeeping, but that quip hadn't stopped him from quietly putting his printouts of apartment listings into a drawer to gather dust. 

"Is it because I haven't given you an answer yet?" Levi wanted to know. 

 

* * *

 

Erwin huffed a soft laugh. Levi never let him hide behind innuendo for long.

"You'd think a former professor would have more patience," he chided himself. "I only thought I'd-"

His phone made a sound. 

Erwin groaned. "It's just an alert," he said as he took it out of his coat, "I really should've turned it off when the campaign en-" he unlocked the phone, on which, front and center, was a photo from some minor tabloid of Mike accosting a reporter with a shiner and a split lip.

Erwin considered reigning in his curiosity until later, but Levi spied it and looked no less intrigued.

Levi frowned. "Is he usually-"

"A brawler? Never." Erwin dialed his number as they walked back to his apartment. He fished out a pair of earbuds and handed one to Levi.

The ringing stopped. "Yeah?"

"Mike," Erwin said slowly.

Mike groaned. 

"What did you do?"

"Me? Me. Mind if I ask why you still have me on an alert?"

"Mike."

"No, really. It's like a baby monitor. I don't appreciate being-"

"Mike."

He sighed. "It's nothing. Okay? Had a long day, been prepping Ymir's run for city council all week. Some hack knocks me off my bike and, you know."

"You once stopped a presser to move a spider outside."

"It was wrapping up!"

Erwin was at once scanning the article, and he was right about being knocked off the bike. Still, it was unconscionable.

"Okay," Mike said. "Fine. You alone?"

Erwin and Levi, sharing earbuds, shared a look. 

"Yeah," Erwin said.

"A while back, I got wind of this third rate rag peddler moving to catch Representative Erwin Smith having an animated dinner with a certain someone-"

Erwin's jaw dropped. 

"-so I just happen to get on my bike and happen to come across the guy-"

"Mike, you didn't-" 

"-and we happen to have an altercation when he dings my shitty bike that happens to be an heirloom from my great great granddad or uncle or whoever I said it was-"

"Why did it come out only now?"

"The rags call us "The Cleaners", Erwin. We probably put away half their sources. Besides, this thing is on some two-follower affiliate blog and a paragraph long. It's nothing."

"Why, Mike, I didn't know you cared so-"

"I'm regretting this already," he groused, and hung up. 

They walked in silence for a time before Erwin laughed. "I'd call him a guardian angel if I wasn't afraid of getting a shiner, too."

 

* * *

 

Erwin's laughter set Levi at ease. He felt a smile flirting around the corners of his mouth, and was powerless to stop himself when it blossomed into a full grin. "I never took you for one to be superstitious," he murmured, and he heard Erwin laugh. It was a carefree sound, calm and loose. Like waterfalls, Levi thought. "And I didn't think you were one to condone physical violence."

Erwin looked surprised. "That's not physical violence," he countered, though Levi could see he was trying - and failing - to stifle a smile. "That's just Mike being...well, Mike. You know." 

"I'm touched, though," Levi continued, looking straight ahead, the whole time wondering what Erwin's lingering gaze might imply. "He hadn't sounded so encouraging about the whole thing some time ago."

 

* * *

 

Erwin threaded their hands together.

"He's that way. He worked to protect me, us, even if it meant pulling us apart." Erwin sobered. "I hated making you wait, hated waiting myself. But if the alternative was an unfriendly knock at your door, I would've-"

He couldn't know what he would have done. Who he would have become if harm looked Levi's way. 

Erwin squeezed his hand.

The apartment was chilly. Nifa wished them a good night as Armin raced to hand her a book she'd left behind. When the door closed, Armin gushed about the street market he'd gone to with Nifa, showed them the baubles they found and hung on their tree, the book he'd found and started to read, and, as Levi hung his coat, bounded towards him and pleaded that he read the rest to him.

Levi looked to Erwin for help just in time to catch the way he pursed his mouth to hide the smile on his face. 

Erwin prepared tea for Levi and himself as Levi read to Armin on the couch - the boy was content with his juice box - and hoped he was steeping it just right. He'd spared a few leaves from the shop for himself to keep around the kitchen. It was wishful thinking, then. He'd nearly gotten rid of them more than once, of a reminder of something that couldn't have been. 

He set them on the coffee table and joined them, taking Armin's other side and throwing his arm against the back of the couch. Levi fumbled with his hair when it fell into his eyes until Erwin took over, tucking the strands behind his ear and not quite parting, trailing patterns across his nape with light passes of his hand until the tension left his shoulders, until the lines lessened on his brow, just a little. 

Finally, Armin dozed off. Levi kept reading.

 

* * *

 

Levi was all too aware of the gentle pressure of Erwin's hand, lingering on the curve of his neck. It was matched with the gentle pressure of Armin's head pressing slowly against his arm with the sleepy weight of trust. A smile played around his mouth, and he let the book fall to a soft close in his lap. 

"Out like a light," he proclaimed, proud that his tongue, once so reluctant, no longer stuttered and slipped restlessly over the syllables. 

"Out like a light," Erwin agreed. Carefully, with slow delicate movements so as not to disrupt the thin thread of Armin's sleep, Erwin carefully maneuvered his son off the sofa. Levi nearly mourned the loss of Erwin's arm around his shoulders. "One moment," Erwin added, softly, padding away to Armin's bedroom to tuck him in. One soft thud, another; Armin's shoes dropping to the carpet. The muffled mumbling of "One more story, please," and Erwin's rumbling soothing to assure him there would be plenty more stories in the future, but reading them all tonight would take the fun out of it. The gentle creaking of Armin's door being pulled closed, but without the soft click of the door sliding home into its jamb. 

"Still here?" Erwin inquired, and Levi wondered idly if there wasn't some subtle nudge to that. Now was far from the time to think about it. 

"Still here," he agreed, smiling up at Erwin as Erwin's hand fell gently on his right shoulder again. "For as long as you'll have me."

Erwin's laugh tingled through him. "I feel that that'll be a fairly long time. A decently long one. An eternity, maybe."

"An eternity," Levi repeated, and, as he returned Erwin's smile, he thought he'd never made a better promise. 

 

 

End.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!


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